need more horse power any ideas

[Mile High VX]

I thought I read somewhere that the transmissions in our trucks can't handle much more power. True?

It's not really a HP issue, but a torque issue. I think I read that our transmission can only handle up to 260 lbs/ft of torque and stock we have 230. Not much room for growth unless you take serious thought about the tranny.

[eternal21]

It's not really a HP issue, but a torque issue. I think I read that our transmission can only handle up to 260 lbs/ft of torque and stock we have 230. Not much room for growth unless you take serious thought about the tranny.

That's another one of the reasons I'm going manual tranny. I'm assuming that the manual tranny from the Trooper will be a bit more robust as I'm assuming Isuzu accounted for the fact that it might be used for hauling.

[pbkid]

The short version is to enjoy what you have. Because if you blow a vx motor...... There's about 5-6k in the garbage

[phines]

The short version is to enjoy what you have. Because if you blow a vx motor...... There's about 5-6k in the garbage

yep, you get a whole lot less HP when that happens.

[pbkid]

yep, you get a whole lot less HP when that happens.

amazing how that works huh?
then you gotta dish out as much money as a new VX just to fix it

[Ascinder]

Some obvious things I've learned in the past that improve hp include going to electric fans, pulleys, intake/exhaust. Since they don't make pulleys someone could always take there set off or buy another set of stock pulleys and take them to a machine shop and have a custom set made out of whatever metal he or she chooses. Fans are easy-ish. Intake and exhuast can be custom made. Its all in how how deep your pockets are.

Intake is a big one for sure, but from what I've read in some of the archived posts, headers were attempted but yielded very little if any gains whatsoever. Our engine is basically a stroked 3.2 liter so that pretty much rules out getting longer connecting rods as an option. Boring it over would yield more cubes, but I don't think our cylinder walls are all that thick to begin with so that probably is a dead end too. Pulleys are a semi viable option, but the costs of running a custom production set probably aren't worth the gains either. The fan idea isn't a bad one, but then you're really only talking substantial gains at the top end anyways, you don't see that power down low. The real HP options are just forced induction or an engine swap. Yes you can nickel and dime and try to turn the VX engine into a race platform if you throw a ridiculous amount of money at it, but then it's just a race only engine that isn't going to last any amount of time and need constant maintenance and tuning. If you're going to go to all that trouble and expense, why not throw it at a more maintstream engine that people actually have parts for and know all the finer points of making power on. Just my .02 cents.

[ibmx2]

I suggest two Yak-40 engines from a passenger jet

mounted high to catch fresh, clean air seems to have been semi-successful for the Russian rail system( plus No torque or tranny issues with this mod)