at what point does hard driving like mashing the pedal down and going close to red in each gear becoming harmful to the car? is there general rules of thumb? what is the hardest you can drive the car while being considerate to the engine?

thankx

 

consistently high piston speeds accelerate the wear on the rings and cylinder walls. eventually it will lose compression.

as long as you keep the valvetrain properly lubricated that should be fine.

 

I don't imagine a properly maintained engine will suffer too much from redlining, this engine was specifically designed for it (we are talking about an S and not a '92 accord, right?). However, if you "hammer" the powertrain abusively rather than using smooth transistions, it might start to dislike you.

 

There is no yes/no answer to your question. The harder the engine is run, the quicker it is going to wear out. No one can tell you, if you redline the car X number of times the engine will last Y miles. The best you can do is start to gather info on how long engines are lasting and under what conditions. The car hasn't been around long enough to get a lot of info. The tracked/raced cars are run the hardest and will fail the quickest. They can be used to give an idea of the minimum engine life that can be expected.

Here is some threads about daily driven cars.
http://forums.s2ki.com/forums/showthread.p...threadid=206312
http://forums.s2ki.com/forums/showthread.p...threadid=188394
http://forums.s2ki.com/forums/poll.php?s=&...lts&pollid=2446
http://forums.s2ki.com/forums/showthread.p...threadid=103487

Here is a thread on failures on track driven cars. Some of these have various mods, so that would shorten engine life.
http://forums.s2ki.com/forums/showthread.p...threadid=142696

Here is probably the hardest driven stock motor. So probably a good indication on the minimum engine life if you are redlining it every shift.
http://forums.s2ki.com/forums/showthread.p...threadid=202911

To preserve the engine just follow the common sense stuff:
- fully warm up the car before really reving the engine
- use a good engine oil and change it regularly
- don't cruise on the highway in low gears
- don't overheat the engine, maintain the coolant
- do scheduled engine tune ups

 

thank you

 

If you have been following the temp measurement thread started by Modifry, you might want to give some consideration to your rear diff. It has become apparent that hard acceleration heats up the rear diff quite rapidly. I think that repeated redline runs through the gears without due thought to giving the rear diff a bit of rest (cooling time) will result in rear end death before engine death will occur.
The engine has a very efficient cooling and lubrication system and electronic intervention. The rear diff doesn't. Even the tranny has its own oil pump.

 

You top out 6th gear on a regular basis?!?

 

usually its only to 4th. so what would be your definition of too often?

 

Those of us who track our cars will keep the thing in VTEC for 30 (or more) minutes straight. I get about 6 MPG on the track because it's in VTEC the whole time. That's probably way beyond anything you've been doing. My car has 80k miles on it with probably 4-5k of those miles spent on race tracks. It still runs as good as the day I bought it. If you street drive the car I wouldn't worry about it. At some point it's gonna break but redlining it, even on a regular basis, isn't going to kill it that much prematurely if at all. Remember, it's a Honda.

 

wow. thank you. by the by, that's amazing. where do you track it and is it open to other socal people?

thnx