I wrote:
It takes torque to keep the vehicle speed up. RPMs measure engine speed, which can easily be increased by downshifting in the transmission.
transamz9 wrote:
The RPM's I'm referring to is at the rear wheels (on the ground where it counts). This is what I've been talking about. These motors are TUNED to run their best at their intended use RPM's.
Well I won't dispute the tuning, which I think was your point. But even in the sentence above you're mixing wheel RPM and engine RPM.
My point was that the role of gearing is to convert an engine's torque/RPM combination (aka power) to whatever torque/RPM combination you want at the wheels. That's different than tuning the engine for sure, but when it comes to determining how well it will perform in a vehicle, selecting the proper drivetrain is as important as the engine itself.
-- Rob
