Originally posted by 95GS-R
I'm not trying to nit-pick, but people like you are following the wrong leads to squeeze more power out of your cars.
I believe you have some things confused. People like me have spent more time than would be recommended for a normal person's sanity around cars and testing various changes. By the time you take a 2 lb. pulley and drive it 40% faster than the crank, even with no drag, you're costing HP that can't be afforded on a small 1.5-1.6L non-vtec engine with ~6500 RPM redline for the performance minded individual. Engines with more HP don't seem to get affected nearly as much.
I spend six years in school studying this stuff and have two degree to back up the stuff that I say (humidity included). I'm not bs-ing or just pulling junk out of my butt.
Okay, okay, my humidity figure might be a bit exaggerated
but you can still go in a tunnel dry and come out the other end with a wet car.
I'm telling the truth that the little free spinning A/C pully doesn't not rob a significant amount of power to even worry about.
"Significant amount" is a very, very relative term. Dyno testing has shown that as much as 3-5 HP can be gained from the deletion of the A/C pulley, 6-8 HP from the deletion of Power Steering, 2-4 HP from a lighter flywheel, and between 5 and 30 can be gained from a completely lightened and knife-edged rotating mass. The less weight the engine has to turn to stay running, the more power it can transmit to rotating the crank faster, the trade-off is less carry-through inertia, which is why street engines are not built the same as race engines, but the A/C does not help the inertia of the engine, so it is pointless to spin.
When you start looking at this level of "power loss", you should be considering other things first, like completely gutting your interior, getting rid of the spare tire, and only running with 1-2 gallons of fuel in your tank.
Right! Let me run around in my car that has no creature comforts, looks horrible and has to be re-filled ever couple blocks, but at least I'll have the belt on the A/C in case the mustang exhaust starts burning my face too much...
