Motorcars are bought for all sorts of reasons,
but enthusiasts like lots of power. To get power, a lot of fuel
must be burnt, and more than half of it, sadly, gets thrown away
as waste heat. For every litre of fuel burnt, 60% of the energy
goes as waste heat into the exhaust and cooling system. A turbocharger
can extract a few percent as useful energy and convert it into pressure
on the intake side, but only 40-45% is left, and only 25-odd percent
actually shows up as B.H.P. at the flywheel. 6% goes in pumping
air into the engine, 6% as oil drag losses and 2 or 3% as engine
friction. The oil deals with at least 97% of the friction; so reducing
the remaining few percent is not easy. If you doubt that even an
ordinary oil has this massive effect, take a clean, dry 200 BHP
engine, connect it to a dyno and start it up. It will only make
1 BHP for a few seconds. Now that's real friction for you!
Oddly enough, people get starry-eyed about reducing friction, especially
those half-wits who peddle silly 'magic additives', which have not
the smallest effect on friction but rapidly corrode bearings and
wallet contents. In fact, even a virtually impossible 50% reduction
in the remaining engine friction would be no big deal, perhaps one
or two BHP or a couple of extra miles per gallon.
