Carrera4 wrote:
I'm amazed that I understood half of what you put in your explanation, but what I don't understand is why would someone doubt that a more efficient, better breathing engine with well engineered parts would create more power, even with less boost? I'm flummoxed, bewildered, and confused that anyone would even question that.
Quoted for possibly another long winded answer.
The problem is, I blew em away by using real math. While I am no engineer, I like me some numbers and am willing to crunch them endlessly to get to the results. A LOT of the initial hatred came from my explanation of why PSI was an arbitrary load of crap as far as I'm concerned. When I explained it to them, I started using a fancy, unheard term in the world of fanboi boosting- CFM. (Cubic feet/min for those who are really freakin tired of my abbreviations). My explanation was pretty simple as far as I was concerned, but it raised the ire of the previously known "experts" of said forums to no end. Basically, these guys were regarded with much respect because they owned the dyno numbers. Dyno numbers mean very little to me as well, because we all know that something as simple a 10* temp shift can radically alter the performance of the car, not to mention how the dyno is tuned, who's dynoing it, what dyno is being used, and what the operator ate for lunch. That, according to them was my first mistake, was openly challenging convention.
My explanation went something like this-
Everyone likes to post PSI this and PSI that. I ask the question, what does PSI really mean? That just means how much pressure is being put on the air in order to compress it to a given density. Easy so far, right? Well, PSI is also a function of of CFM, though not as easily as you might think..... PSI is a 2 dimenional function.... and CFM is 3d. This is where I started losing people. So I tried to break it down by using a water analogy. Say you have a fire hose, that is set to spray a pre determined amount of water- I think I used a gallon. gallon, being a measure of volume, or what kind of space it takes up, functions similarly to what CFM is.... because CFM is a function of how much air you can cram into a given space over a period of time. Raising or lowering the pressure level, or PSI, can affect how quickly you move that volume of water. I have NO idea how much fire hoses flow, or at what PSI.... so my math was a little foggy. BUT say you have a fire hose that sprays at x PSI. It will take say, 10 seconds to move a gallon of water through a little hole. Raise the PSI of said fire hose, and you can move that same amount of water much faster through the same opening. The SAME can be accomplished by keeping the pressure at the same level, but widening the opening. You double the available space to move an object through and you can move twice as many objects through that space in a given time. No extra pressure required. Basically what I did, was increase the space that the air had to move, without increasing any pressure. (This arguement also got me out of an HOV lane ticket once, though the cop told me NEVER to try that crap again or he was arresting me for....something).
The other part that baffled them is how compression affects the air in relation to heat. Heat is the enemy when trying to cram air into an engine, we all know this. We also know that when a turbo spins more PSI than stock, it is compressing the air further. To put it REAL basic like, compressing the air makes the molecules all angry like. Think of it like this- when you increase the PSI on fire hose (this is the same hose from before) sure, you move more water. However, the flow of the water becomes much more erratic and harder to control. Air is kind of the same way. Not to mention the added heat from a turbo functioning at near capacity.... and this is ALL bad. So, by allowing the parts to work a lot more easily together, I managed to create a situation of greater efficiency as well. Turbo is happy, because it can move as much air as the ECU wants it to move, without having to work as hard. my air is happy because it's not all crammed into a tiny little area. My charge temps are lower because both my turbo and my air are happy, and not getting all angried up with heat. Car likes this, an operates more efficiently as well.
That arguement led to some crude comments about my mother from someone who was SO disappointed with the platform he sold his ms6 (sharing the same engine) and bought a Caliber, so he could wave his car-peen around with big numbers. My reply was simply that his numbers meant absolutely nothing to me, as all it proved was he could spend a load of money to have someone else make a car go fast. Who cares how it ran, it put down a big number. I then corrected his grammar, as he had stated that "Your an idiot, go play in traffic". I caught a lifetime ban shortly thereafter.
This is a great place. Everyone is a little strange, but great. Can you imagine the block party if we all lived on the same block...
Half of them wouldn't run and the rest would be transplant victims that ran like scalded dogs.
