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[hotel21]

In my interpretation, it will provide an increase in available power.  Simple physics, as its less metal to get spinning thus making more of the engines power output available for other things i.e. moving the car along the road.

The main rub, however, is how much power is now released and what effect, if measurable, will that have on a car not far short of 2 tonne?

If the car were stripped out to the most basic of running shells then perhaps an increase would be detected when driving but if retained as per factory standard, I doubt it would only be seen on a dyno.

2p  

[Paul M]

I agree with Mark, it won't make the car accelerate noticably faster because the power/weight ratio is too low. A car that weighs 1700 Kg with only 210 BHP driving it is never going to be particularly fast. A lightened flywheel is only likely to produce a noticable difference when it's a light car, such that the angular inertia of the flywheel becomes a significant proportion of the mass of the car.

It'll definitely help with the responsiveness when the drive is disengaged, I find the Omega engine is particularly poor in this respect, if you blip the throttle with the clutch down (say on a downshift) the revs hardly rise at all. You have to hold the throttle open for a second or so to give the revs time to catch up. That I suspect is largely due to the heavy flywheel. It doesn't really matter much as the pedal layout is crap so it's near impossible to heel-toe effectively anyway.

Personally I wouldn't bother. Oh and the reason Coutenay sell them is because there's demand -- i.e. they can make money doing so

[Martin_1962]

Martin....do you REALY think that shaving 10 Kg off a flywheel will make a 1700Kg car accelerate faster.....come off it!

The limiting factor is the engines power and the most significant contributing factor is the vehicle weight.

It will make the engine spin faster if it neutral.

Only a tiny bit - probably not worth doing, but if you were chasing tenths would be worth doing once you have shifted a lot of weight.

Other slow downs are heavy wheels, & prop shafts.

All this rotating stuff does take power to spin up.

Not much on a percentage way but if you want to chase it there it is.

[Martin_1962]

.....It will make the engine spin faster if it neutral.

.... or slow down quicker.  

This is what I found - bike engines with basically bugger all flywheels change revs almost instantly*

* Except ones with heavy balancer shafts ect

Also due to the TC I would say that autos have less effect from flywheel mass, as they don't have to keep making rapid RPM changes.

[Martin_1962]

Mark - What do you recon then? (as in a power increase)

I can't see somewhere like courtenay selling a lightened flywheel that doesnt do anything
it just doesn't seem right....

What I am saying is that it does, and Mark is saying that in the context of things it would make minimal difference.