Hi! New to site and just wondering......

[ecivic]

First, let me say that this site is a gold mine of information. I love it. I've owned my green 92 LSL since March and aside from all the notorious SVX quirks, it's a great car. I've put about 10k miles in the six months I've owned it. Here's some food for thought. I was wondering.....why only 240 hp. What are the restrictions in the engine/drivetrain? I mean the Honda S2000 has 120hp per liter, naturally aspirated. So why can't we have that? At least a 330hp N/A SVX?

[Manarius]

Originally Posted by ecivic

First, let me say that this site is a gold mine of information. I love it. I've owned my green 92 LSL since March and aside from all the notorious SVX quirks, it's a great car. I've put about 10k miles in the six months I've owned it. Here's some food for thought. I was wondering.....why only 240 hp. What are the restrictions in the engine/drivetrain? I mean the Honda S2000 has 120hp per liter, naturally aspirated. So why can't we have that? At least a 330hp N/A SVX?

Subaru is conservative with their tuning....

More HP wasn't really necessary to compete with other cars at the time.

[crazyhorse]

More HP + marginal transmission=LOTS of warrantee claims.

[Crazy_pilot]

230HP

Horsepower is calculated using a formula based on the engine's torque at a given RPM. If you look at an F1 car, they put out numbers like 780 HP out of an N/A 2.4L V8. That's 325 HP/L. The thing is, that happens at ~20,000 RPM. You'll find that a lot of the engines that produce big HP/L numbers also rev very high. They're designed to be rev-happy engines, whereas the EG33 is a torque-y beast, happier (in stock form) at lower RPMs.

One of the members here, longassname (LAN), has developped a new valvetrain that helps the engine run better in the high RPM regime. He was also looking to get a set of performance N/A pistons developped, but there hasn't been much interest so far. Visit www.ecutune.com for more info on that.

But trust me, it gets much worse than the SVX. My 99 Taurus makes a whopping 145 HP from a 3L V-6.

Oh, and welcome to the network!

[Crazy_pilot]

Folow-up to my previous post, because I'm bored and felt like doing math:

HP = (T x N)/5252, where T is torque in lb-ft, and N is RPM's.

Using this formula, and the F1 numbers of 780 HP and 20,000 RPM, I get 204 lb-ft. This illustrates how a madly high RPM engine can produce huge HP numbers, but the torque is essentially what you would expect from a 2.4L.

The opposite end of the spectrum:



This is the Lycoming 540. 540 for 540 cubic inches, or 8.8L, in a horizontally opposed layout. This is an airplane engine, my friend has one in his float plane.

This engine makes up to 350 HP. I see jaws hitting the floor. Only 350? Yup. Here's the thing, it does that at 2500 RPM. Plug 350 HP and 2500 RPM into my formula at the top of the post, and it gives you 735 lb-ft of prop swinging torque.

So, the point of all my meandering...

The EG33 is built to make torque. The cylinder dimensions are over square, meaning the bore (width of the piston), is greater than the stroke (distance the piston moves up and down). Over square typically gives you better torque. So if you can get an over square engine to runs well at higher RPM's, you're laughing. Problem is that wider pistons means heavier pistons, which is bad for high RPMs.

Hopefully this sheds some light on your question!

[ensteele]

The SVX was designed as a Grand Touring Car. It was not meant to race with other cars, so HP was not really an issue.