99 Acoord EX - hard acceleration
lots and lots of fail
Joined: Dec 1999
Posts: 23,004
Likes: 1
From: Deeeeeeeeeeeeeeetroit
Are you fucking serious? I redline my car at least once on average every trip I take, if it's a long trip I'll nail it 5 or 6 or more times. I've probably redlined my car ten thousand times since I've owned it. I have 221,675 miles, full compression on all cylinders, I burn a quart of oil every 6-7k miles, G-TECH 0-60 a couple months ago of 7.5 seconds, 28MPG highway...these cars were made for this. It isn't a 1942 Plymouth. And it's not a shitty Ford 3.0L Duratec with a cast iron crankshaft and valves in a Taurus. Modern engines are dyno tested for hundreds (often well over a thousand) hours at redline, peak power and peak torque to make sure they can withstand faaaar faaar more than you can ever throw at it.
Abusive is not maintaining your car. Abusive is revving up to 4k in neutral and dropping it into D4. Abusive is never checking your oil. Driving it hard is the way it was meant to be driven.
If you want to piddle around and never go above 4k RPMs, sell your Accord and buy a Taurus. What's the point?
Abusive is not maintaining your car. Abusive is revving up to 4k in neutral and dropping it into D4. Abusive is never checking your oil. Driving it hard is the way it was meant to be driven.
If you want to piddle around and never go above 4k RPMs, sell your Accord and buy a Taurus. What's the point?
Swollen Member
Joined: Feb 2006
Posts: 1,219
Likes: 0
From: Show Me State
:werd: I drive my car like this too, probably even harder. It's hard not to especially with a I/H/E setup and upgraded suspension. It's like it begs to be driven like this, well at the least the voices in my head are telling me this. :eh:...nevermind that last part...
Junior Member
Joined: Jun 2006
Posts: 7
Likes: 0
Dude, it's a Honda. It's MADE to be flogged. Mr Honda liked it that way.
Ever ride a Honda Dream? Teeny little bike's engine had to be screamed to get anywhere. They screamed for years without trouble. How about the CB-750? Not only would it walk away from a Harley twice its size, it would keep going long after the Harley was wheezing blue smog. Remember the early US 4-wheel Hondas? Like 850cc engine, had to be flogged to keep up with US traffic, they did and they did so for years, some still cruising. And there are Honda engines turning concrete mixers (Honda makes special bike-like engines with slow-speed gearing for such chores), hard-hard work, year after year.
What could happen?
It could break instantly. Throw a rod. But Hondas don't do that.
It will wear-out "early". A hard quarter-mile pull may cause as much wear as a mile or two of normal driving. But there's a lot of miles in a good engine. Even my '79 Ford made 238,000 miles and was scarcely wheezing when gas-cost just got absurd. And it got that far only because it shrugged-off at least two accidents with lesser cars: mostly today, cars get crunched before their engines wear out.
In the long run, yes, you could "warp a piston". If you hitch a car engine to a heavy truck and start across Wyoming (the whole state is uphill and upwind), it may overheat and sieze up. That was certainly true of the 1960s US car engines: rated 400HP, and would really deliver 350HP for 5 or 10 seconds. But in medium truck duty they would fail at that power. So they used the big block with small pistons and smaller carb so it could never make 220HP, but would hold 200HP for months. A car can't hold full power for long without violating all speed limits, cars on public roads never use full power for long enough to warp pistons.
You didn't break it. You didn't warp nothing in a few seconds. Odds are the engine will not wear out before the body gets trashed.
That was fun. Do it again!
Ever ride a Honda Dream? Teeny little bike's engine had to be screamed to get anywhere. They screamed for years without trouble. How about the CB-750? Not only would it walk away from a Harley twice its size, it would keep going long after the Harley was wheezing blue smog. Remember the early US 4-wheel Hondas? Like 850cc engine, had to be flogged to keep up with US traffic, they did and they did so for years, some still cruising. And there are Honda engines turning concrete mixers (Honda makes special bike-like engines with slow-speed gearing for such chores), hard-hard work, year after year.
What could happen?
It could break instantly. Throw a rod. But Hondas don't do that.
It will wear-out "early". A hard quarter-mile pull may cause as much wear as a mile or two of normal driving. But there's a lot of miles in a good engine. Even my '79 Ford made 238,000 miles and was scarcely wheezing when gas-cost just got absurd. And it got that far only because it shrugged-off at least two accidents with lesser cars: mostly today, cars get crunched before their engines wear out.
In the long run, yes, you could "warp a piston". If you hitch a car engine to a heavy truck and start across Wyoming (the whole state is uphill and upwind), it may overheat and sieze up. That was certainly true of the 1960s US car engines: rated 400HP, and would really deliver 350HP for 5 or 10 seconds. But in medium truck duty they would fail at that power. So they used the big block with small pistons and smaller carb so it could never make 220HP, but would hold 200HP for months. A car can't hold full power for long without violating all speed limits, cars on public roads never use full power for long enough to warp pistons.
You didn't break it. You didn't warp nothing in a few seconds. Odds are the engine will not wear out before the body gets trashed.
That was fun. Do it again!
Junior Member
Joined: Jun 2006
Posts: 7
Likes: 0
> It isn't a 1942 Plymouth.
Actually, the Plymouth Six is about the toughest engine ever made. The Israeli Army was still buying 1934-1960 Plymouth Sixes for new trucks in the 1970s, because they were so unkillable. Peak power was around 3,400RPM, but they will cruise above 4,200RPM for years. My brother has a '42 that has never been touched except oil change (occasionally) and plugs and carb gaskets, runs good: a bit rich, but strong.
A friend of the family flew a 1934 Plymouth engine. Low cost airmail transport. It flew fine, roaring along at full power. It finally let him down when he had 500 pounds of mail and 600 pounds of extra fuel coming down the coast of Alaska. Even then, it let him down gently: he was able to go bang between two rocks and walk away. And odds are he wasn't changing the oil as often as he shudda. (And pre-1980 oil was much worse than modern stuff.)
> And it's not a shitty Ford
Hmmmmm..... I'm an old Ford guy. A properly prepared Windsor will rev to 8,000 RPM and hold it for days. In 1963, Ford took a trio of "stock" Galaxies to Daytona and held them at 100MPH (about 80% of full power) for 100,000 miles (6 weeks of 24/7) without failure. And yet: I took my '79 over 3,500RPM, once, and it quit. A 2-cent weight came loose in the distributor, jammed it, broke the cam gear. A rebuilt dist was only $34 so no big deal except I had to get towed home. Ford's big parts are 99.9% tough, but you really have to check for "minor" flaws. Honda builds them right, even the little parts.
Actually, the Plymouth Six is about the toughest engine ever made. The Israeli Army was still buying 1934-1960 Plymouth Sixes for new trucks in the 1970s, because they were so unkillable. Peak power was around 3,400RPM, but they will cruise above 4,200RPM for years. My brother has a '42 that has never been touched except oil change (occasionally) and plugs and carb gaskets, runs good: a bit rich, but strong.
A friend of the family flew a 1934 Plymouth engine. Low cost airmail transport. It flew fine, roaring along at full power. It finally let him down when he had 500 pounds of mail and 600 pounds of extra fuel coming down the coast of Alaska. Even then, it let him down gently: he was able to go bang between two rocks and walk away. And odds are he wasn't changing the oil as often as he shudda. (And pre-1980 oil was much worse than modern stuff.)
> And it's not a shitty Ford
Hmmmmm..... I'm an old Ford guy. A properly prepared Windsor will rev to 8,000 RPM and hold it for days. In 1963, Ford took a trio of "stock" Galaxies to Daytona and held them at 100MPH (about 80% of full power) for 100,000 miles (6 weeks of 24/7) without failure. And yet: I took my '79 over 3,500RPM, once, and it quit. A 2-cent weight came loose in the distributor, jammed it, broke the cam gear. A rebuilt dist was only $34 so no big deal except I had to get towed home. Ford's big parts are 99.9% tough, but you really have to check for "minor" flaws. Honda builds them right, even the little parts.
Last edited by PRR; Jun 5, 2006 at 07:15 PM.
lots and lots of fail
Joined: Dec 1999
Posts: 23,004
Likes: 1
From: Deeeeeeeeeeeeeeetroit
Originally Posted by PRR
> And it's not a shitty Ford
Hmmmmm..... I'm an old Ford guy. A properly prepared Windsor will rev to 8,000 RPM and hold it for days. In 1963, Ford took a trio of "stock" Galaxies to Daytona and held them at 100MPH (about 80% of full power) for 100,000 miles (6 weeks of 24/7) without failure. And yet: I took my '79 over 3,500RPM, once, and it quit. A 2-cent weight came loose in the distributor, jammed it, broke the cam gear. A rebuilt dist was only $34 so no big deal except I had to get towed home. Ford's big parts are 99.9% tough, but you really have to check for "minor" flaws. Honda builds them right, even the little parts.
Hmmmmm..... I'm an old Ford guy. A properly prepared Windsor will rev to 8,000 RPM and hold it for days. In 1963, Ford took a trio of "stock" Galaxies to Daytona and held them at 100MPH (about 80% of full power) for 100,000 miles (6 weeks of 24/7) without failure. And yet: I took my '79 over 3,500RPM, once, and it quit. A 2-cent weight came loose in the distributor, jammed it, broke the cam gear. A rebuilt dist was only $34 so no big deal except I had to get towed home. Ford's big parts are 99.9% tough, but you really have to check for "minor" flaws. Honda builds them right, even the little parts.
As for this one...take it from a mechanical engineer who has personally witnessed 3 Ford engines self destruct because they can't handle sustained performance testing. Ford puts as little money as possible into everything they do. They figure it's cheaper to tell a customer he was beating his engine too hard and it deserved to die than to use stronger valves or better manufacturing methods and/or materials in their engines.
