Stop, or I'll Separate You Two: Ford Delivers Another Ram Beatdown in the Ongoing Torque War

And 12-speed transmissions.

Raw pulling ability is really about horsepower, not torque. Horsepower is a measure of work. A 450-horse Power Stroke would power a semi just fine... up one hill. The difference between the Power Stroke and the heavy truck engines is that the big guys are built to put out peak power for hour after hour, day after day -- a workload that would destroy the Power Stroke in short order. They spin slowly (thus putting out more torque to generate the same horsepower) and the sheer volume of metal helps them dissipate heat really well.

@dal20402 It would be interesting to know when and for how long these can do rated power. Full authority electronics gives the ability to do a lot of things situationally.

@indi500fan Well the current 6.7 is used in MD straight truck and tractor applications. In those trucks they are rated at 270, 300 and 330 Horses and their B10 life is 500K with the assumption that they will be pretty much run flat out all day every day.

@dal20402 Um, what?! Transmissions multiply torque - not horsepower. Try pulling an old boat with a F1 car or a motorcycle... You'll destroy both transmissions regardless of installed horsepower. Also, over-the-road trucks do NOT operate at 'peak power for hour after hour, day after day': they run the highest ( numerically lowest ) gear they can get away with for both fuel economy and longevity. More Also, the difference between a Power Stroke and a heavy truck engine is displacement - not designed output. Twice the displacement gives twice the torque - at a similar horsepower. Give your head a shake.

@Tele Vision If you can cool the F1 engine at max output, without help from the airflow resulting from the speed they normally attain after about 3 seconds of max output, you could gear them low enough to pull a boat no problem. It's not an efficient way of building engine for pulling, but the only torque that ultimately counts for towing, is wheel torque. Which can be attained by high engine torque and tall gearing, or low engine torque and a deep gear. The latter being aided by being able to go a decent speed even in a low gear, at 18,000 rpm. Someone told me a horse can put out over 1000ft-lbs of peak brake (static, zero speed) torque. More than a Superduty! Which is great for getting a stuck carriage moving without the aid of a gearbox. But, as it's just one horse, it still only has one horsepower (even the sometimes poo-pooed, slow revving Cummins has more than that.....), so the carriage will never move very fast up a hill.

@Tele Vision Did you see anything in my comment about transmissions? stuki is right - the F1 engine would pull the boat just fine if you could manage to keep it cool.

@dal20402 "Horsepower is a measure of work." Not quite. Power is work per unit time. If you double the power you can do the same work in half the time, or twice the work in the same time. James Watt measured a horse and found it could do 33,000 ft-lbs of work in one minute. This became his definition of one horsepower. Note that even though torque and work have the same units, they are NOT the same thing.

@TR4 Still "Horsepower" is an antiquated measurement and deceiving until we know the type of engine, its max torque and when it hits. I say let's do away with it, or mention it after telling us about the torque figure. 140 HP means one thing for a 4 cylinder, something totally different for a V8, and yet something wildly different for a diesel. Just knowing the max torque figure tells us a whole lot more, with little need to know its HP rating. We really can't equate "horses" to cars anyway. Like a Kia Forte would have "Shetlands" and Cummins would have Clydesdales. Dumb measurement.