If I added a light flywheel to improve engine responsiveness, does this mean mpg will decrease?

Answer 1

The lighter flywheel should actually increase MPG because it reduces engine drag and improves effiecency.

Light wight components such as flywheel, light weight clutches, pulleys, harmonic balancer, etc all improve reponsiveness. I have gone through all those on my chevelle race car and it did increase pick up off the corners.

Answer 2

The gain in fuel efficiency will be hardly noticeable, but it will be a gain from the change. Your driving may vary.

You will notice the gain in responsiveness. The flywheel has a pretty decent amount of inertia due to it's diameter. When you hit the pedal to the metal, the resistance from the flywheel eats up engine power which gets wasted during shifting. The only word of caution is to be careful when you hit your gas. Your engine will rev much quicker without load.

Answer 3

I doubt you'll see any mileage (MPG's) differences from anything other than your "responsive" driving habits.

Automatics have flex-plates bolted to torque convertors that weigh the same more or less than flywheels and there's no power loss or gain from one or the other. The new CVT tranny's have far less metal and weight and they are even more efficient than the old slush-a-matics ever were.

Momentum is created by the engine and as you know that when you shift a manual tranny yo take your foot off the gas pedal and push in the clutch and then slide it into the next gear and then release the clutch and then step on the gas pedal. By the time you reach the gas pedal the engine RPM's have already dropped to idle.

Same/same. Doubt you'll see any drop or increase in MPG's.

Good Luck!

Answer 4

Yes it will increase. There is less workload for the engine to turn thus resulting in better fuel economy. The only down fall about this is that it is now soo much fun accelerating that you may actually hurt your fuel mileage lol so just drive normally- but still it is a lot of fun taking off now isn't it? Happy Hollidays!

Answer 5

You really should be careful when changing the flywheel weight, because you lose torsional momentum as you reduce weight, this can negatively effect engine performance.

Answer 6

Yes!