I'm sure half of you guys are gonna spit your drink out in disgust at this question, but as a full disclaimer, I love cars but am not a mechanical guy ... So the question is this - I have a 2015 GT with SSII... And I love driving it in manual in second and third ... However, what am I doing to the car's engine/transmission, etc by running it so often at high rpm? Love it this way, such a visceral experience ... But I don't want to be killing the life of components by years ... Let me know, would love some advice to make sure I keep loving it and it stays in shape for the long haul ... Thx guys

 

Well if you cruise around at 3000rpm instead of 1500rpm you put twice the wear on the parts. If the car is a toy and you drive 3000-5000 miles a year then who really cares. It would take 10 years to get 100k miles of wear and you had the fun of driving it rather than boring commuter miles. Either way in 10 years the car should run perfect with only 30-50k miles on it no matter if it was 50k worth of wear or 100k. Just make sure to check you oil levels as you'll burn more oil reving higher but I bet if you tore down a 50k mile engine and a 100k mile engine they would look almost identical. Just stick to the scheduled maintence and keep up with checking fluids and drive it how ever you enjoy driving.

 

One more thing, I'm assuming in the last post a level of common sense. You can't expect to cruise around town 20mph at 6000 rpm and have the cooling system of the engine and transmission capable of handling that.

 

As long as you are on top of maintenance you should have no problem.

Looking at your location, you are probably doing a lot of local twisties, and not cruising on the highway in 3rd gear (lol).

The rev range is there to be used, so feel free to use it!

When I was in engineering school, the tolerance and life time of a part is designed as a factor * some multiple above its highest stressed or load point. Meaning the engine is *most likely* not designed to be operated for 200k miles, at an average of 2k rpm. But maybe 200k miles, at a rpm above the redline, provided the coolant system keeps up and oil are changed at even shorter interval.

 

Keep in mind these engines are built to be taken up the RPM band often. You can actually do better by the engine by using it as it was built to be used then the other way around.

 

Thanks guys ... Really appreciate it ... Was hoping this was the case but wanted to confirm - only 5k a year and lots of twisty! Thx again

 

One extra thought, I believe that a large amount of the wear a car suffers is in the first 10min of each drive, ie in the warm up period. So just keep your revs sensible and fairly steady and I would say that once the car is up to full operating temperature then you can let fly without too much paranoia! Obviously all the aforementioned points still apply. Go for it and keep posting!

Cheers, Mark