....a replacement for displacement? Maybe not 'the' replacement, but for all intents and purposes...

your thoughts? i've been all over the internet and not ONCE have I seen an intelligent discussion about this. I AM NOT SAYING THAT VTEC IS THE BEST THING SINCE RICK JAMES!!! I just want opinions.

<-----dons flame suit

 

all VTEC is letting the motor do is use a "reasonable" cam for normal daily driving and a "hot" cam that will let a 1.8 liter motor breathe at 8K RPM's

Its not a break thru to have motors rev to 8000 RPM, but It was a well engineered compromise that brought good MPG and daily driving torque to production cars

 

Like he said, Vtec is fuel economy

 

Vtec isnt fuel economy. its making a complete package out of a motor....

The old integras before VTEC had plenty of economy and VTEC didnt change that..

The old racing integras (and tons of other 4cyls) had 8K RPM's and 200HP and Vtec didnt change that.

VTEC allowed a fully warranteed street production car to have the charastics of BOTH the previous racing models and econoboxes. Power and MPG, was quite the feat back in the early 1990's.

 

Vtec is definitely not a relacement for displacement,how many "all motor hondas" do you see beating up v-8's?Atleast none that arent using nitrous....

If you would of said a turbo or super charger i would of seen it more reasonable though....BUT no Vtec is not a replacement for displacement is my book....

 

I got vtec from idle to 6krpms,

Vtec is definately a brilliant idea all kidding aside, but is definately not the replacement for displacement.

 

Here's what got me to wondering this....

"Physics says that for a given efficiency level, a higher rate of fuel consumption is needed for the engine to generate power. So it becomes obvious that if you want more power, you need to increase the rate of fuel combustion. One way to achive this goal is to have a bigger engine. A bigger engine with larger cylinders will be able to combust more fuel per rotation than a smaller engine. Another method is to pre-presurize the fuel/air mixture and cram it into an existing engine size. Thus even though the cylinder size stays the same, more fuel is combusted per rotation. This second method is referred to as forced induction.

Honda chose to explore another method: keep the engine size the same, but turn the engine faster to consume more fuel. Here is an analogy: You want to move foam peanuts from one bucket to another with a cup. You can increase the size of your cup, compress/cram as much peanuts as possible into the cup each time, or you can just move the cup faster. All three methods moves more peanuts. Honda uses the last method. And again, more fuel combusted equals more power generated by the engine"

courtesy of http://www.leecao.com/honda/vtec/whatsvtec.html

 

Good analogy, but a vtec motor will never be able to spin fast enough to make up for say a 5.7 chevy and a 1.8 honda at the same efficiency rate.