Most of my driving is on the highway and since I encounter a vehicle in front of me going 60mph in the middle lane quite often I am forced to pass them by going into the left lane and mashing the pedal. My 07' TLS auto trans has 2 passing modes, the first is a slight downshift and some increase in power or pedal all the way down & RPM hits about 6,000 and alot of power. This is how I have to pass vehicles because there's usually a fast approaching vehicle from behind in the left lane doing 80mph+. My question is this: How tough are our engines? Can they withstand persistant 6,000 RPM's without damage? I'm not bouncing off the rev limiter and use Agip synthetic oil every 5,000 miles. I've reset the car's computer many times to get it out of grandma mode, but I wish our transmissions had more gears and engines 330 Hp.



BTW I drove most of my day today on Rte 84 in connecticut, besides being a death trap I had to deal with slow moving Tractor Trailers going up hills, driving in the middle lanes & crazy drivers with no patience. Add in 60 mph drivers in the middle lane and it was a tiring commute. This is when I had to get the RPM's up in order to pass.

 

Is this thread for real?

 

Honda motors are neigh bulletproof.
You are ok.

 

looks like it for real



OP your engine doing just fine, no damage been done but why not use SS mode since you can avoiding down shift near red line and still able to pass other car?

 

thats where Honda motors make the most power.
from 4k-7k.

you wont hurt it if you bounce off the rev-limiter, as there is a protection there.

 

Continue to mash the pedal and enjoy it.

 

Personally I'm get more scared of damaging my glass transmission when I drive like that....



But that's just mw

 

you've probably driven a Pontiac once or twice in your life.

 

Those 2 "modes" you're talking about are 4th and 3rd gear lol.

It doesn't hurt the car. Every time you start it and drive it you're putting wear on the engine. Every time you floor it you're putting wear at a quicker rate. In the grand scheme of things a few short full throttle pulls a day aren't going to hurt a thing. The engine is the last thing you need to worry about.

For it to hurt the trans, you would have to do lots of back to back full throttle upshifts and downshifts. As long as you're making a pass and going back to normal for a while, it's fine. Watch the 4-2 downshift though. It's not going to happen unless you're going slow enough to hit 2nd gear but the 4-2 is the one that puts wear on the 3rd gear clutch pack due to insufficient exhaust flow in the 3rd gear circuit. You can do a 5-2, 5-3 (the most common), or 5-4 downshift. Over time a lot of 4-2 shifts will take their toll on that clutch pack.

Have fun with it, don't worry about flooring it.

 

good info! i always like reading your posts!

 

its better than your advice.

"reset the ecu."

 

this is near sig-worthy

 

THANKS for the replies, very much appreciated. Unless you mash the pedal you will barely have enough power to pass another vehicle, and it will take forever. If drivers in the middle lane would do 70mph we wouldn't have these problems, but yesterday I came across endless drivers going 60mph. Reminded me of ZOMBIES.

 

While we're on the topic, is there any difference in wear if you do a 5->3 when you are accelerating VS you are going on an exit ramp and don't want to hit the break? Everyone suggests to me using the breaks because trannies (okay that word always weirds me out, cause I'm only familiar with one kind of tranny...) cost a lot more -- but if I am always doing 5->3 on the highway passing, I don't see the difference in using it to slow down.



Sorry -- another question also, why do people bitch about the gap in 3rd to 4th on the 5AT TL? Seriously -- 3rd gear runs to 109MPH, so how in the heck often do you even get to shift 3rd to 4th whilst accelerating? I'm scared shitless of getting arrested just because merging in the highway 60 in 3rd becomes 105 in 3rd in no time...



The only reason you have to mash the petal is to tell the car's artificial intelligence that you "really seriously do want to go badly enough that it should think about throwing you into 3rd gear". So, if like me, you'd prefer not having to mash it, you can just throw your car in sports mode and manually double-click the down paddle shifter -- instantly be in 3rd, and only press the pedal down a little bit but still have all that power behind it. It feels truly *awesome* when you ride around a highway to highway ramp in 3rd and merge into traffic on the other side like a friggin BOSS. (BTW the reason I'm still so excited about this is that I just figured it out 2 weeks ago, prior that I had the same conception of the whole thing as you do)

 

^right, you want to be in the correct power band.
which is 4K and up.
so if third gear puts you at 5k at 60mph, you're right in vtec. which allows you to pass easily.

 

 

 

^ Apparently that post was deleted

Yeah, don't worry about the engine OP. I'm just repeating what's been said, but it's your tranny you should be worrying about. Honda's never had a hard time producing reliable engines. Transmissions, that's another story.

 

I find the TL power band is from 4.5k rpm to redline at strongest, I was accidentally bounce off the rev limiter for couple time but I worry more about the AT than engine. I put the car in SS mode all the time when driving since I can manually select which gear I want to be in.

 

I remember way back when I had my first car and I let a friend drive it. She took it and beat the piss out of it all the way to redline repeatedly. I thought she was going to break the dam thing. After all my parents had always told me that was the way to damage your engine. Turns out my folks were wrong, and that's just were the power is.

You're not going to damage your engine driving once in awhile at high rpm. Sure if you spent hours at it you'd have accelerated wear. It also burns gas much faster. However unless you're constantly bouncing off the rev limiter you're not going to break anything in any normal circumstance. I've had all sorts of cars out at track days, etc and the engines all come through just fine. Tires and brakes are another matter.

 

If you are going the same speed at like 3500RPM in 3rd as 1500RPM in 5th, is it burning gas at like twice the rate? Or is it just some percentage more like ... 20% something... ?

 

You'll be fine. Your engine will take that all day.

If you need more power add stickers to your car. It will add 10 hps per sticker and up to 3 gears.

 

No, it wouldn't be twice the rate of fuel consumption. Your 20% estimate is probably more correct. Regardless of RPM or gear, no additional power is used to move the car if you're at a steady speed. In other words, the amount of power used to move the car is the same regardless of which gear you're in or what your RPM's are. However, there are many sources of energy loss in a car, one of which is drivetrain motion. Engine components are heavy. Despite lubrication, they take a fair bit of energy to move around. When the engine components are moving faster, more energy is required to keep them in motion. Therefore, even at a consistent speed, the two scenarios you gave will typically result in lower mileage at the higher RPM.

But it's not as significant as you might think. I'd estimate 10-20% or so. I've monitored real time mileage at different RPM's and the differences are relatively minor (usually 1-3 mpg's) when going from 6th to 5th to 4th and even to 3rd at speeds such as 50MPH. But unless you need the extra power at the time, there's no reason to cruise in 3rd at 50MPH. That's just silly

 

It'll be some fraction. Fuel used a function of a whole lot of things, RPM is mostly an enrichment function. You're also talking more friction at high rpm. The big difference in your example is going to be throttle position. That's going to be the prime determinant of how much air you're taking in and consequently, how much fuel you'll use. WOT its a little simpler.

Here's a pic of a fuel map

 

Take 2,000rpm vs 4,000rpm at a steady state speed for example. At 4,000rpm, each injector is firing twice as often but the amount of fuel per stroke is just a little over half of 2,000rpm.

The main contributors of less mpg at high rpm vs low rpm assuming steady state operation is pumping losses, friction, and I guess you could call it inertia.

The big one though is manifold vacuum. Going into a higher gear requires the throttle to be opened slightly more to maintain the same speed which means less manifold vacuum. Less manifold vacuum will mean better mpg under the right circumstances because it reduces pumping losses. This is the main reason small engines get better mpg than large engines. The throttle has to be opened farther to maintain a given speed or for a given acceleration. Friction and rotating mass also apply.

Use the same amount of throttle at high rpm and low rpm and you will get half the mpg at high rpm. Combine heavy throttle with high rpm where the injectors are firing 2-3 times more often and you can see the effect on mpg.

Hope this make sense, I only have a minute to write.

 

^^^god dam he is like car wiz here on AZ.

 

You just figuring that out?

 

Volumetric efficiency is a better measure than MAP as it accounts for a whole lot of stuff that MAP is assuming is static. Particularly on a v-tech car. Never was a fan of MAP based systems as they didn't react as well to changes as MAF.