can you turn it off and on?

 

A stall is like a clutch for automatics. Look here for more info http://www.fuddleracing.com/wst_page3.html You cant turn off a stall.

 

so does it hurt mpg even on slow take offs?

 

you will loss some mpg. But not suxh pending on how big of a stall you go with. usually from 1-3mpg loss

 

www.howstuffworks.com has a good descrition

 

I lost about 8-10 mpg when I did my 3400 stall. I also ruined a set of tires in 2 weeks though.

 

damn now thats a loss. I have not heard of loses that large

 

I get 17mpg in the city with a 3500 stall and H/C.. The biggest loss is going to be because you cannot keep your foot out of it..

 

My loss was due to my right foot loving the way it takes off with the new stall not b/c of the stall itself. Add the stall plus the exhaust and I just can't resist the temptation. That's why I said what I said about the tires. Sorry if I caused any confussion.

 

i get 12mpg with my stall/gears and cam, city only driving though, < 40 mph

 

My input on how:
Take 2 fans and face them toward each other and turn one on. The one that is not on will start to spin after the other one is up and runnin because of the air pressure that is generated. From here look at the fan that is turned on being driven by your engine instead of electricity and the other fan hooked up to the input shaft of the tranny and instead of air pressure there is hydrolic pressure. The larger the fans the faster the unpowered fan spins up and the smaller the fan the slower.... so far so good. Converters are load sensitive meaning the more load that is applied to one side will require more load on the other to keep from moving. Say your going down the road in your car and you come to a hill, the car starts to slow down because more load is being applied to the tranny side of the converter but not the engine side so you give it more gas to equalize the load to maintain speed. In general the smaller the converter, the higher stall speed it will have because of the smaller fans desciption I was talking about earlier. Say you have a V8 S10 and have a 355/TH350 with a 3k converter in it and can footbrake 3kout of it. Take the drivetrain out of the S10 and put it into a 1 ton dually- you will probably be able to footbrake it to 4k now because of the extra load the converter sees compared to the S10. Same goes with engine power, you have a 400hp engine in the S10 and can footbrake to 3k but swap engines to a 550hp engine and probably footbrake to 4k. Another thing is gears, the lower the rear gears the tighter a given converter will be because of load- the lower the gear, the lower the load will be to move the vehicle because of torque multiplication the gears will give. You have a car with 2.73s in it and can footbrake 1800 but swap to 4.10s and probably can only get 1500 out of it.

 

Good write up, Bo.