VTEC vs. nonVTEC
SweetOh
Wagonist
Well there’s a lot of debate on this. I google this found other Forums talking about this but there wasn’t a strait answer.
Here’s what I gather. NonVTEC are your basic daily drivers. Low power and fuel counsumsion-(gas saver). Easy to maintain and lightweight. A small hand full of mods and accession to give it a little more ummf.
The Vtecs are your sports motor. Good power range, great to good fuel mileage -(depends if ya keep your foot off of it) easy to challenging maintains and Great Mods and Accessory you can get to make it a speed demon.
1.) So whats the better motor?
2.) Or does this depend on what your doing and what for?
3.) Does SOHC and DOHC play a big roll in this? :?
Here’s what I gather. NonVTEC are your basic daily drivers. Low power and fuel counsumsion-(gas saver). Easy to maintain and lightweight. A small hand full of mods and accession to give it a little more ummf.
The Vtecs are your sports motor. Good power range, great to good fuel mileage -(depends if ya keep your foot off of it) easy to challenging maintains and Great Mods and Accessory you can get to make it a speed demon.
1.) So whats the better motor?
2.) Or does this depend on what your doing and what for?
3.) Does SOHC and DOHC play a big roll in this? :?
Comments
vtec was designed to mate the high rpm power and low rpm reliability/stability characteristics to obtain a higher HP/liter ratio. with this they were able to create the vtec. it controls timing of the valves to control the air/fuel ratio that is let into the cylinder. so ultimately, the vtec engines should be just as fuel efficient as a non-vtec, just with the bump in power.
vtec was initially designed for the DOHC, so it timed the valves on both sides of the engine, ie the intake and exhaust. but with the SOHC, the valves are only timed on the intake side. the bump in power isnt enormous, but still larger than a nonvtec engine.
my opinion, i'd pick the vtec engine. it's got the best of both worlds. you've got fuel efficency, higher HP numbers, and the aftermarket support isnt so bad either. with simple bolt-ons you can get a reasonable gain in power.
anyone stop me.....or correct me. you guys know more than me, thats just what i know
Unfortunately, on a plain SOHC design, its a pretty one dimensional personality.
The power delivery basically looks like a bell curve. When deciding on a cam, you can pick where in the rpm range you want that bell curve to start.
Too early and power drops off before the engine is out of revs.
Too late and you'll never see the power peak before the rev limiter kicks in.
Aftermarket cams can stretch/flatten the bell curve or make it steeper..but it still has to follow the same basic curve.
If you found a hot cam that made the best peak power, its most likely going to have crappy bottom end.
So what if you could have one cam profile for the bottom end and another for the top end performance? There's your vtec...it's just a dual profile cam. When the low end bell curve is just starting to drop off, the high end curve is just starting its peak. The nice thing about the SOHC vtec designs, cam designers can make an ultra hot top end and barely touch the lower profile....meaning you get all the power gains without any of the bottom end compromises.
DOHC is a better foundation to start with but its a whole 'nother can o worms.