Question about redlining or going near (manual transmission, gaskets, fuel, engines)
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Most of the time I drive my car conservatively and on occasion get on it. The other day I took off from a light and was at red line in second gear. felt awesome and what an acceleration. I see guys post vids of them redlining all the time. How often do you red line? I have to admit I was a bit uneasy about reving it so high.
On my Mustang I would do a couple of full throttle acceleration runs every day. This was not spinning the tires, but once I got it started from a stop, accelerating to almost red line in first and shifting manually into second, and if space and conditions warrant, I would wrap it out in 2nd and up into 3rd. The fuel pump would shut off if you exceed the red line by a couple hundred RPMs to help save the motor. It ran quite well until my oil pump failed at 306,000 miles.
My current daily driver has a Yamaha designed Toyota VVTL-I engine that has a second camshaft profile from 6,200 - 8,200 RPMs that really pulls at that point. Since it is just a 4 cyl, and not a powerful V8, I do hit the "lift" point of 6,200 as it is called, quite a bit every day. It is just fun to hear the motor scream!
As long as you don't run it up and exceed the red line all of the time, you would be fine. Doing it a few times a day won't hurt, as long as you don't attract any unwanted attention!
The motor and gearing in my car are designed to get it scooting off the line and thus runs out of steam at the high end, so there's not much point in redlining it. I do enjoy that down-low shove though.
If the motor couldn't take it, the computer wouldn't let it. It's designed to operate within the RPM band.
But what happens if you drive a manual transmission and say you hit redline in 1st gear at 40mph. The engine automatically slows its speed for you and the tach needle will bounce back. Are you saying that's not bad?
I say its almost never okay to do it continuously and constantly, something WILL break. It's also not a good idea to not do it for a long time then all of a sudden do it.
I also believe you should not redline old engines 120k+miles, especially if you haven't been good about fixing oil leaks. If you have oil leaks your just a few redlines from a blown head gasket.
I-6s are the worst. Every one of the 3 blown head gaskets I have had were I-6 engine cars. I believe it is the reason you don't see too many I-6s anymore.
I stopped redlining and driving aggressively 6 years ago. I really have seen a decrease in maintenance costs.
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It's designed to operate within the RPM band.
