How often to you "wring out" your vehicles?

[Jetronic]

Originally Posted By: gregk24
I was out driving yesterday and decided to give the Accord an Italian tune up. I eased onto the gas from a stop then floored the pedal and got up to around 80 MPH hitting the max rpm (auto) at every shift point. It had about 5-6 miles to warm up before I did it, I also dropped it down to 3rd gear and let the engine spin at 3000-3500 for maybe half a minute or so to heat it up before I dropped the petal. I only do this maybe once every couple months, I am otherwise a very conservative driver with 3000 rpm being the max. How often do you wring your cars out?


almost every day, weather and traffic permitting

 

[SwampSurvivor]

I very rarely drive the Focus hard. Once in a while, getting on a short on ramp, maybe I'll get on it a bit.

The Jeep doesn't get driven too hard. Only time I'll really start to push it is if I'm off road and get in some mud or snow. Then it's a lot of foot-to-the-floor action.

 

[gfh77665]

Originally Posted By: kschachn
Originally Posted By: gfh77665
I hate my son's 2001 Mercury Grand Marquis I bought him about a year ago.

I hammer the thing when I occasionally drive it, and I like to do it when its "stone cold", literally two blocks from my driveway. I punish that sucker!


So you're intentionally trying to harm something you bought for your son?


Just letting off a little steam. The Marquis became a money pit, one week after buying it. The A/C went out. $1000, Then a month later, it started bucking like a wild horse going down the road. The D/A "mechanic" tried three things, on my dollars, before finding the coils were bad. $1200 more. The $2200, plus $150 trans flush and $150 two tires all add up to $2500, which is more than the the $2000 I initially paid for it.

What a joke, my "beautiful" $4500 old POS Marquis. Actually I want it to run and get my son through high school. I just want it to suffer as much as possible along the way. LOL.

 

[supton]

Originally Posted By: gfh77665
Originally Posted By: kschachn
Originally Posted By: gfh77665
I hate my son's 2001 Mercury Grand Marquis I bought him about a year ago.

I hammer the thing when I occasionally drive it, and I like to do it when its "stone cold", literally two blocks from my driveway. I punish that sucker!


So you're intentionally trying to harm something you bought for your son?


Just letting off a little steam. The Marquis became a money pit, one week after buying it. The A/C went out. $1000, Then a month later, it started bucking like a wild horse going down the road. The D/A "mechanic" tried three things, on my dollars, before finding the coils were bad. $1200 more. The $2200, plus $150 trans flush and $150 two tires all add up to $2500, which is more than the the $2000 I initially paid for it.

What a joke, my "beautiful" $4500 old POS Marquis. Actually I want it to run and get my son through high school. I just want it to suffer as much as possible along the way. LOL.


Aggravating, but sounds about right, for a $2k car.

 

[supton]

Ford made a big to-do about the testing they did fir the EcoBoost. Full throttle pulls, alternating between -40c water and the, hard pulls, etc.

How many other OEM's do likewise, as routine drivetrain reliability testing?

If they do this for hours on end, just how bad is our thirty seconds of "abuse"?

*

I used to wind out my Jetta, it was fun. Granted that was me going to 4k, but redline was 4,700, so it was being flogged. And it loved it.

My Camry never really gets wound out, but I will drive it harder than the wife does, intentionally winding it to 4k. My Tundra goes WOT about twice a year, for merging reasons, but otherwise lives at or below 2k.

Although that small V8 does start to sound nice above 3k...

 

[Nick1994]

Originally Posted By: supton
Ford made a big to-do about the testing they did fir the EcoBoost. Full throttle pulls, alternating between -40c water and the, hard pulls, etc.

How many other OEM's do likewise, as routine drivetrain reliability testing?

If they do this for hours on end, just how bad is our thirty seconds of "abuse"?

*

I used to wind out my Jetta, it was fun. Granted that was me going to 4k, but redline was 4,700, so it was being flogged. And it loved it.

My Camry never really gets wound out, but I will drive it harder than the wife does, intentionally winding it to 4k. My Tundra goes WOT about twice a year, for merging reasons, but otherwise lives at or below 2k.

Although that small V8 does start to sound nice above 3k...
What was weird was when I had my 96' Chevy Silverado with the 5.7L, if I babied it commuting it got maybe 16-16.5 mpg. If I drove it normally and got on the throttle and didn't worry about passing people and stomping on it when needed but not driving insane it still got about 15.5 mpg, it wasn't enough of a savings for me to care about driving like a granny so I quit worrying.

Wish I still had that truck...

 

[SwampSurvivor]

Originally Posted By: Nick1994
Originally Posted By: supton
Ford made a big to-do about the testing they did fir the EcoBoost. Full throttle pulls, alternating between -40c water and the, hard pulls, etc.

How many other OEM's do likewise, as routine drivetrain reliability testing?

If they do this for hours on end, just how bad is our thirty seconds of "abuse"?

*

I used to wind out my Jetta, it was fun. Granted that was me going to 4k, but redline was 4,700, so it was being flogged. And it loved it.

My Camry never really gets wound out, but I will drive it harder than the wife does, intentionally winding it to 4k. My Tundra goes WOT about twice a year, for merging reasons, but otherwise lives at or below 2k.

Although that small V8 does start to sound nice above 3k...
What was weird was when I had my 96' Chevy Silverado with the 5.7L, if I babied it commuting it got maybe 16-16.5 mpg. If I drove it normally and got on the throttle and didn't worry about passing people and stomping on it when needed but not driving insane it still got about 15.5 mpg, it wasn't enough of a savings for me to care about driving like a granny so I quit worrying.

Wish I still had that truck...


Empty, my dad's F350 gets 15MPG. Doesn't matter how hard or conservative you drive it.

With a utility trailer loaded with a few thousand pounds ... it gets 17.

 

[TFB1]

Originally Posted By: gfh77665

What a joke, my "beautiful" $4500 old POS Marquis. Actually I want it to run and get my son through high school. I just want it to suffer as much as possible along the way. LOL.


In '10 I paid $4500 for a '98 but was one owner garage kept, 33Kmi... Other than the POS plastic intake failing, it's only had maintenance items plus tires, shocks and battery replaced in that time(I did all that work, tires were free, almost new from another car I bought to resell)... I bought the intake and was going to replace it myself but a friend's son lost his job back around Thanksgiving so I paid him to do it, got approx $400 in repair including intake & a set of spark plugs, just turned 67Kmi...

BTW you better treat that '01 nice, those have a history of timing chain guide failure('00-'03) plus possibly the intake failure(was fixed sometime in '01)...

 

[gfh77665]

Don't care. Like I said, I want it to make it through my sons two high school years, but if it don't thats OK.

If it does, I am then going to put non-detergent 40wt. in it and go WOT from a cold start. That'll show 'em!

 

[A_Harman]

Originally Posted By: supton
Ford made a big to-do about the testing they did fir the EcoBoost. Full throttle pulls, alternating between -40c water and the, hard pulls, etc.

How many other OEM's do likewise, as routine drivetrain reliability testing?

If they do this for hours on end, just how bad is our thirty seconds of "abuse"?



All manufacturers do WOT durability and deep thermal shock testing for hundreds of hours on individual test engines. Even the testing they do just to measure engine performance would get you arrested in about 12 seconds if you drove the engine that hard on the street. In order to get a "stabilized" reading at any power setting, including max power, they will let the engine dwell at a speed and load condition for at least 3 minutes to make sure the operating parameters are stable before taking the performance data. When was the last time you floored the gas pedal for 3 minutes?

 

[Benzadmiral]

I can't really bring myself to wring the engine out very often. Gas costs too much (in relation to my income) for me to throw a cup of it out the window.

That said, I'll drop the car into a lower gear when going up a ramp or a hill (a rare thing in Loozyana -- they're really only freeway overpasses) and rev up to 4000 rpm sometimes. The Regal's redline is somewhere near 6K, so that's hardly a stress. With the windows shut and the A/C on, I hardly hear it.

 

[Shannow]

My Nissan Truck I drive to work two days a week, and point it at hills and hold it close to flat in 4th, to get the revs up, not "racing" per se, just to get some heat and flow going (the snorkel sounds like the Batmobile doing it).

Caprice gets some full throttle roll on acceleration a couple times a week...found out last night that my wife has started showing boy racers the Caprice tail lights from a standing start....she likes the 10psi boost.

 

[supton]

I swear, my Jetta really liked being beaten on. Low cruising speed gets the mpgs, but hard driving kept it responsive.

My truck does feel more responsive, but I swear mpg goes up if I wind it out a bit. Again, low cruising speed, but get some heat into everything, and magically the mpg goes up.

 

[Delta]

Originally Posted By: supton
I swear, my Jetta really liked being beaten on. Low cruising speed gets the mpgs, but hard driving kept it responsive.


Funny you mention this, although my Jetta is gas, it seems to want run hard as well. Also noticed something else today, if I shift at a higher RPM, it seems a whole heckuva lot smoother. If I drive like grandma it's clunky as all get out, no matter how I use the clutch. Glad I live near some mountains to really run it.