How do you convert engine torque to horsepower?
Have you ever looked at the specs of an engine in a magazine and seen something like “this engine makes 300 pound-feet of torque at 4,000 RPM,” and wondered how much power that was? How much horsepower are we talking about here? You can calculate how many foot-pounds of horsepower this engine produces using a common equation: (Torque x Engine speed) / 5,252 = Horsepower The engine that makes 300 pound-feet of torque at 4,000 RPM produces [(300 x 4,000) / 5,252] 228 horsepower at 4,000 RPM. But where does the number 5,252 come from? To get from pound-feet of torque to horsepower, you need to go through a few conversions. The number 5,252 is the result of lumping several different conversion factors together into one number. First, 1 horsepower is defined as 550 foot-pounds per second (read How Horsepower Works to
