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I am trying to figure out what is the maximum speed I can drive my car at. I have 2007 Hyundai Sonata with a I4 engine. Any ideas where I can find this out?
So far top speed I have driven at was 110 mph on the freeway for about 30 mins to 1 hour. I didn't attempt to push my Sonata further since I wasn't sure if I4 engine could take it. I hear the V6 Sonata can supposedly hit speed limiter at 140 mph. My I4 wasn't at red line yet, so maybe I can push it to 120 mph or so.
The gearing ratios dictate the theoretical top speed of a vehicle, but with a car like yours, actual top speed will be power limited assuming you're driving on a flat road. A 4 cylinder Hyundai sedan wont have enough power to overcome the huge wind and rolling resistance at speeds much above 110-115 mph. Some cars are powerful enough to run out of gearing though, which basically leaves you bouncing off the rev-limiter in the top gear.
Like frank said, you're only going to go as fast as the limiter will let you. Generally they are set to match the rating for the OEM tires on most cars. Outside of that most luxury and sports sedans are governed at 155 per the German gentlemans agreement and still others like the Z06 Corvette are ungoverned.
In a vacuum the car can go as fast as the gearing would allow it. Putting the basic values in for a Sonata 4 cylinder the car could theoretically go about 172mph if it was in a vacuum. That is calculated using max engine RPM, tire size and the cars gearing. However, there is no way that the car could actually achieve that speed do to aerodynamics. The car simply does not have enough power to push itself through the air.
Plugging in some rough numbers, if you could remove the limiter and had good tires, your car would top out around 120mph in the real world.
Thanks for info guys. I think I can probably push the Sonata to 120 mph max from my experience driving it at 110 mph and from the info on here. Not sure I will actually try out though, these days I am not feeling as adventurous!
Why would you care what an econobox like the Sonata can do in top speed.
i'll save you the trouble 120mph.
Something else to think about http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcfEMGlzDN0
The latest turbo 4 cylinder Sonata has an output of 274hp, which with a removed limiter (limited to 130) and a set of decent tires should be able to hit 145+ without trouble.
Another thing is the speedometer. If you want fairly accurate measurement, use a GPS navigation, don't rely on the speedometer; it's designed to read higher plus there is parallax.
Top speed of a car basically determined by one of these: gear/rpm limited or aero drag limited.
Be safe about this
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