Alternative engines

[William T Wilson]

On Thu, 22 Apr 1999, Kurek, Larry wrote:

> Huh? How does it accelerate if it has no torque? Maybe they just
> didn't gear it correctly. Maybe a CVT type of transmission is needed
> to keep the rpm up and multiply the torque accordingly. With
> electronic controls, it would be

Maybe.  Don't most turbines spin something like 30,000 RPM?  It's a lot.
And they don't really produce any torque at all until they get up to a
substantial portion of that.  You'd need a 20:1 final drive ratio to get
"normal" performance, so that won't do.  What I would recommend is a
reduction before you feed into the transmission.  Before the clutch, even.
I wouldn't trust most transmissions to take that much RPM on the input.