What Is Torque on a Lawn Mower?
It is challenging enough to attempt to figure out family power dimension, but it becomes downright confusing once the method for describing those measurements changes. For example, your house air conditioner was rated in lots, but is currently rated in British Thermal Units, or BTUs. Not so long ago your lawnmower motor was rated in horsepower. Lawnmower manufacturers now typically rate their engines by other measurements, such as cubic centimeter displacement or gross torque.
Turning Power
Horsepower is a measurement of work. It was initially developed by James Watt to describe how much coal a horse could pull from a coal mine over a specified time period. Watt figured a healthy adult horse could transfer 33,000 pounds 1 foot in one minute, making 1 horsepower equivalent to 33,000 foot-pounds/minute. While horsepower measures function, torque measure force against a fixed pivot point. To put it simply, torque is turning electricity.
Lawnmower Torque
While measuring your lawnmower’s engine in horsepower might be more comfortable, since its long history makes it increasingly familiar, your lawnmower’s torque rating might be more useful. Horsepower only explains how much work the engine is capable of producing, whatever the direction in which that function is implemented. Torque explains how much electricity goes to actually turning your lawnmower’s rotary blade.
Lawnmower Design
A number of variables can impact a lawnmower’s gross torque rating, for example, engine configuration, mower configuration and motor size, usually described by cubic centimeter displacement. Based on the way in which the motor and mower are configured, an engine with less horsepower might actually deliver a larger volume of gross torque. Greater torque translates to improved, more efficient performance.
Horsepower to Torque Conversion
If you bought a new lawnmower ahead of the origin of the 21st century, odds are its motor was rated in HP or horsepower. A 3.5 HP motor was generally good enough to handle a small lawn of less than a quarter-acre, while a 5 HP motor would perform the task to get a larger yard. Replacing that old 3.5 HP lawnmower with a present model with the identical amount of power based on its gross torque rating might be challenging, since there’s absolutely no exact conversion method that thrives HP to torque.