Throughout the automotive community, there are many misconceptions regarding the differences between freeing horsepower and making or adding horsepower. I can understand why, as these are both similar concepts in several ways. Despite these similarities, both can be very different in determining what any given modification might do for your engine and your vehicle!
In this article, I’m going to discuss the important differences between freeing horsepower, making horsepower, the common misconceptions about these two, and other frequent questions people ask regarding them.
“What are the differences?”
If you think you might know the differences between these two, a quick test is to see if you know which category headers fall under. This component is tricky to figure out, and the answer is that it surprisingly falls under both categories. If you don’t think you knew that, and even if you did, make sure to read on as I’ll be going over important information you might not know regarding these two types of modifications.
What is Horsepower how does it apply?
In simplest terms, horsepower is the unit of measurement that we use to determine the power of an engine. Nothing spectacular there, but if we can understand how it actually works in an engine, we’ll have a better understanding of the differences between adding and freeing horsepower!
The engine in a vehicle is a power house, and we have two different methods in order to make it work better! Firstly, we can add certain components that increase the engine’s output. Our second option is to reduce the restrictions that stop it from making more power! Your engine has a combustion cycle in which it needs specific key components to work.
Your engine is creating power at a level with resistance, those being:
- Friction between the components in your engine.
- Heat caused by engine combustion.
- Weight of the vehicle.
- Air temp/pressure.
- Power it takes to move the parts within your engine.
We can measure the resistance a vehicle is facing by looking at the output, measured in horsepower as stated above. We can take two different routes, by either adding or freeing horsepower in order to get to this endpoint, and I am here to teach you about both of them!
Making Horsepower
This is the thing everyone knows about! This is the thing everyone wants! The caveat is, do people really know what it is?
Making horsepower involves the addition of the key components needed for the combustion cycle of the engine to operate. The key things needed to have a combustion engine are:
- Intake(air).
- Fuel(Gasoline/Ethanol).
- Compression.
- Spark(Ignition).
So to increase horsepower you would have to be increasing one or many of these with either aftermarket parts or by tuning.
See articles Stage 1 and Stage 2 if this interests you!
Examples:
- Adding turbo kits(increase amount of air through intake).
- Adding a fuel pump/changing injectors(Increase the flow rate and psi of fuel being injected).
- Shaving heads(Increase the compression of the engine).
- Installing higher output coil packs/plug wires(stronger spark).
- Spark plugs (cool or heat spark to allow better and thorough burn).
These are such a small number of things you can do! I am giving you some examples to better understand what is happening!
The reason making horsepower is good is because doing so allows you to push the limit at which your engine can function. This has nothing to do with the efficiency of your engine, and instead consists of just adding more power. In an ideal world, you could simply keep adding power to your engine, but in reality you are going to reach a point in which your engine becomes restricted, or even breaks, and we really don’t want that. To negate the downsides of making horsepower, we need to look into freeing horsepower.
Freeing Horsepower
Freeing horsepower has less to do with the numbers and more to do with making the numbers count. That is a little perplexing so let me explain.
You can view this like trying to increase the threshold for horsepower. Freeing horsepower doesn’t necessarily always grant extra power but it allows one to increase the power of your engine safer. Sometimes as a result you gain a couple extra horsepower!
“Less restrictions means higher threshold for max power.”
In order to reduce the restrictions and loss in efficiency your vehicle might be facing, you need to increase the flow between components inside your engine, reduce stress, or remove some of these restrictions so that more power can be freed from these restraining components.
You might find value in my Free Modifications article.
Examples:
- Porting and polishing intake and exhaust components, which helps increase substance flow efficiency.
- Switching to lighter weight engine components(Lightweight rockers, lightweight flywheel ect…).
- Heat wrapping exhaust to reduce engine bay temperature (cooler intake).
Important: Freeing horsepower can also be recognized as reducing knock retard (KR) which helps to ensure no pre detonation happens. Knock retard is a result of the ECU (Engine Control Unit) or the PCM (Performance Control Module) changing the timing advance in order to protect your engine from pre detonation.
This is really bad for performance, and could even lead to a catastrophic failure of your engine! In reducing it, you allow your engine to be more powerful, but also safer. Having a safer range of timing advance will enable you to add more modifications that can increase horsepower!
Can there be both?
This is where the distinction between these two categories can get a little confusing, since there are components that provide large gains in horsepower, and also remove a restriction from your engine, such as the headers mentioned earlier.
The difference between components such as headers and components that just add or free horsepower is that the former don’t accomplish just one, but instead both of these at the same time. These components will remove a restraining component and also provide a larger performance gain also! This is a big reason as to why headers can be confusing, but now you know!😉.
Again, headers aren’t the only modification sharing these properties. Other examples include things such as:
- Lightweight performance valvetrain parts.
- Cold air intakes.
- Removing certain emissions equipment 👀.
Along with many more! All of these provide gains while also reducing restrictions in your vehicle.
So, the answer is yes! Certain modifications can both free and add horsepower. Being able to understand how different modifications affect your engine will help you tremendously with your modification process, and help ensure that you won’t be stuck fixing broken parts or making low power!
The Third Category…
Finally, there is one more category which we haven’t yet touched on, which is similar to freeing horsepower but not exactly the same.
Adding different modifications like forged internals or upgrading your cooling system you are protecting your engine which helps contribute to a higher threshold for power by protecting your engine from the power you have added!
This specifically happens when you are increasing the efficiency of your engine and strengthening weak points that could lead to potentially catastrophic failure. These mods don’t specifically add horsepower but are a well worth while investment when you are starting to make larger amounts of power!
Conclusion
Now that you understand what the differences are between adding vs freeing horsepower, using this information it will be easier for you to determine what your engine needs in order to make more power! Whether that means increasing the threshold of power for your engine or filling an existing threshold by increasing your power. You now know the differences between freeing and making horsepower, along with other valuable information!
Thank you for reading this article, if there is any more information you would like to see here, make sure you let me know in the comments below! Don’t feel shy to reach out to me VIA email or any other social media platform if you want to talk to me privately!
