So yesterday I committed a horrible act... Revved my car up between 6k-7k rpm while it was cold... This is the only time I've ever done it, and sadly it was necessary for safety. I had to turn onto a highway with low visibility shortly after starting up. A car came over a hill doing what seemed like 80-90 mph. Since I was already on the road I didn't have much choice but to speed up excessively (they almost didn't slow down in time even with me taking off so quickly!).

Anyway, this leads me to my issue... When I was taking off and got between 6-7k, I felt what I thought at the time was my clutch slip. Made my heart sink immediately. But I got to thinking about it and I'm not sure that's actually what happened. When I hit that RPM range, and the "issue" happened, my RPM's didn't rise like I would expect with a slipping clutch. It almost felt like fuel cut-off, although I wasn't anywhere near that level.

I was reading elsewhere about this and someone brought up something about a "safety feature" that did something like not allow VTEC to engage and/or cut fuel below a certain engine temp. It wasn't very well explained, but I was hoping someone might know more about it.

Any ideas? I feel like I haven't caused any damage to the car. Drives like it did any other day. If I did that would be completely ridiculous being that it's only happened once. Thanks in advance for any advice.

 

Your car is fine from now on warm it up first

 

Thanks for the reassurance xeon. I was pretty sure it was fine. I guess I was more looking for clarification on the cold rev limiter thing. I was hoping for some kind of documentation from Honda talking about it if anyone could provide that. Sorry I wasn't more specific. I guess it's evolved slowly from a scary issue to an information inquiry. I can't seem to find anything else on the internet about it other than random forum talk.

 

What year is your car

 

Where was your temper garage? 1 bar? 2bars? If it's below a certain temp then yes there is a limiter.

 

Mine is a 2006 and with 3 or less bars it will limit around 7200 and also will not engage vtec. Only found out once, I keep it below 4500 until I have 4 bars normally.

 

I never pull out of my driveway with less that 2 bars on MY03 or less that 4 bars on MY06, cautious but just feel better doing so.

 

I'm with you. I don't even use the A/C, until 3 or 4 bars. Let the drivetrain warm up as much as engineers intended, before adding more stress. Prolly just me. Think that running a good 5W-30 or 0W-30 also helps with cold startup wear.

Well, I hope all this helps.

 

My car is an 06. When I pulled onto the road but temp gauge was only at 1 bar... By the time I was doing 60 or so it had jumped to 5 bars.. kinda painful. After that I'll be sure to wait much longer before taking off on that road. Luckily I don't live there, so I won't be in such a situation again.
​​​​​​Well, hopefully not anyway...

 

?? all this talk about "waiting til the engine is at the temp that Honda intended" before driving. The owner's manual does not recommend warming up your car . That topic has been beaten to death...and "warmer uppers" will always be "warmer uppers" even though they're hurting the car more than helping.

To answer OP's question, the cold rev limiter is at like 7K RPM. Its there to prevent abuse while the car is still coming up to temp. Its normal. It happens. Sometimes, you hit the cold limiter. Its why its there .

Just don't make a habit of hitting it.

Also, as additonal info...clutch slip does not cause RPMs to stop rising . It causes wheel speed to stop rising while allowing RPMs to rise.

And more additonal info: The owner's manual recommends that you start the car, wait a few SECONDS, and then drive slowly to warm up the engine. Once the engine's coolant reaches temp, you can drive normally. There are SO many benefits to doing it this way rather than letting it idle to warm up.

Also, you may want to drive normally for a while longer before driving the car hard. Coolant temp and oil temp are two different things .