You're right... but if you look at any of the tunes... the torque is generally massive. You're not far off of 300 ft-lbs with a stock turbo with some of the reflashes. Near 400 ft-lbs with a W1 turbo and ethanol. Any ethanol tune is pretty well sky-high on torque. All with a 1.5L. Diesel trucks don't have displacement to torque ratios like this... and their engines are suited to high torque. I cannot think of many gasoline engines off-hand that are being asked to do what ours are regarding their torque output... though much of it is from having a tiny turbo able to flow so much at low RPMs. As I've understood... you can't make as much torque for a proportionally greater amount of flow at a higher RPM because your piston is moving so much faster... the pressure is acting on that piston is a shorter amount of time. I don't know that much about our valvetrain... the lack of the ability to rev the car out is always going to hold us back compared to the older K-cars once they added a turbocharger... to say nothing of their added displacement which gave them an immediate advantage once you went FI. I think the CTRs were having valve float by 7300 or so... though that's still a totally different engine and is pretty not-applicable, but there was way less headroom to work with than some of the older NA K-engines. I'd love to see some parts to safety let these little guys push past 7000 RPM. I think that's key to making big power numbers still. I'd call 400-500 hp absolutely massive. I always am kind of grading our engine on a curve based on it's tiny displacement.
If you look at Emans 360 WHP build, the one thing to notice is that he pushed mid-range power to come on between 4000 rpm and 7000 rpm. You just cannot have that much HP to the wheels for something this light, fwd, and keep the tires more than a day and not torque steer down a cliff if the power was in the lower range. If you look at MAPerformance's 500 whp build, I bet they did the same thing...pushed power further up the rpm range so the wheels would actually get traction.You're right... but if you look at any of the tunes... the torque is generally massive. You're not far off of 300 ft-lbs with a stock turbo with some of the reflashes. Near 400 ft-lbs with a W1 turbo and ethanol. Any ethanol tune is pretty well sky-high on torque. All with a 1.5L. Diesel trucks don't have displacement to torque ratios like this... and their engines are suited to high torque. I cannot think of many gasoline engines off-hand that are being asked to do what ours are regarding their torque output... though much of it is from having a tiny turbo able to flow so much at low RPMs. As I've understood... you can't make as much torque for a proportionally greater amount of flow at a higher RPM because your piston is moving so much faster... the pressure is acting on that piston is a shorter amount of time. I don't know that much about our valvetrain... the lack of the ability to rev the car out is always going to hold us back compared to the older K-cars once they added a turbocharger... to say nothing of their added displacement which gave them an immediate advantage once you went FI. I think the CTRs were having valve float by 7300 or so... though that's still a totally different engine and is pretty not-applicable, but there was way less headroom to work with than some of the older NA K-engines. I'd love to see some parts to safety let these little guys push past 7000 RPM. I think that's key to making big power numbers still. I'd call 400-500 hp absolutely massive. I always am kind of grading our engine on a curve based on it's tiny displacement.
40# sounds awful though... other than a tech demo. It'd suck to have to cool the intake charge that has been pressed up that high.
You said it... and it's probably something I've failed to express myself. If it's a person's goal to mod for the love of modding… then who am I to tell them they're wasting their money? If that makes them happy then, well... money bought happiness.
That's exactly my point with this particular platform and engine. To achieve those numbers you need a bigger turbo, ethanol etc. You also need to move the power higher into the rpm range, and you ARE going to get lag from the bigger turbo. I bet if you drive Emans build, it's probably fun on the track, fun in the canyons, but terrible as a daily driver as it will struggle off the line
I agree. @kshawn and @JDMpo0kie are two people who did something close to what you are looking for. They did not achieve the 350 whp, but Kshawn probably came close to 300
I dynod at 355hp without meth and at 28psi. I was definitely making more during the failure, but hadn't had a chance to re-dyno.
Thanks for the correction, yes now I remember the graph
Did you rebuild the 1.5? That's impressive out of such a small motor. In a car that light you'd be able to surprise a lot of people.