Is it ok to hit the redline?

Aah, I remember having to gun my two day old Tacoma on this on ramp...



I cried a little bit on the inside...

 

If taking it to the rev limiter was damaging then Toyota would have dropped it down. Back when I was turning wrenches for a living there was two types of engines I saw on a regular basis that had issues across models and years. The first was the totally neglected engines, improper oil, forgotten oil changes, generally abused and not cared for. The other was the babied ones, cars don't like being babied, especially the mechanical bits. Sure it's fine to drive them like that 95% of the time, but for crying out loud, spin them up every once in a while and put them under some sustained load. They're designed to operate under a wide range of loads and engine speeds. Try and make sure it sees this range of use.

 

Sometimes a good run down the highway is the best thing for your engine. Helps clean out the carbon build up on the engine. Stop and go driving and short trips are the worst thing for a engine.

 

My first car was a 1986 VW Jetta with 5 speed manual. I used to run it to the redline all the time getting on the freeway. Pushed it one day and found out about the fuel cutoff. Gas flow came back after it dropped way down in RPMs. Would only burn oil when it was run above 100 mph way out in the middle of nowhere. Never between oil changes. Had it for 11 years and sold it to my boss at the time for his kid. Had 281,000 miles on it.

 

What a rip off. Dealer price on katzkins are around $550. Maybe get paid a little more if they don’t do much business. Even if they subleted it out to another shop that’s still one hell of a markup

 

Yeah, I got a little too excited at the time and just went for it. Too late now. Have to bite the bullet and get every penny’s worth out of it.

 

Because it has a Lexus engine.

 

you can “redline” the truck as much as you want. It has a rev limiter and will never reach near the true redline unless you do something stupid like downshift a manual trans when you are already at “redline.” The engineers likely put at least a 10% factor of safety on this engine so true redline without a limiter would be more like 6600rpm (probably even more since the Lexus version of this same engine is limited at 6600rpm)

I have a rev limiter I installed on my 1970 Opel GT. I set it for 5800 rpms. Redline on the Tach is 6000rpms. True redline is like 7000rpms. Just because I set my rev limiter at 5800rpms does mean I’ll blow my engine if I sit at the rev limiter! The car will be totally fine. That’s literally the purpose of it.

 

Absolutely fine.

 

I've seen plenty of people speed up just to cut someone off too. Can go either way on screwing up traffic

 

I think what would help this discussion is an explanation of the primary reason for limiting the revs below the engine's rev limit. When a engine revs too high, the valve springs are not strong enough to force the valves back up quick enough and you get what's called valve float. In a zero clearance engine, this results in your cylinders having an intimate encounter with your valves. In other engines, you get detonation with the valves open. Both circumstances are detrimental to the engine.

However, as numerous others have stated, modern cars have rev limiters that make sure you never get close to this limit. If you sit in a parking lot in neutral and rev the engine to the max, you'll see the engine bounce off of this rev limit without going over. I would not recommend doing this, as extended periods of high revving in neutral can overheat an engine, as there's no airflow through the radiator, accept for the electric fan.

As it has been stated plenty of times, toyota engineers would not design a vehicle that would be damaged by simply pushing the gas pedal.

 

I can remember a kid with a GTI back in the 1980s that used to do that all the time, put it in Neutral and hold the pedal to the floor to watch it bounce off the rev limiter.

 

I went to school with a kid who ate paste..White glue...

Mebbe your guys brother methinks

 

Aces bro! So apropo of my post...well Done!

 

Ralphie was the first thing I thought of too when he said ate glue, lol.

 

They were built to work! Same thing goes for other stuff too. I'm a radio geek and I have a small collection of vintage radios. You gotta run them now and then to keep the capacitors formed and within tolerance. And there are "mechanical" things that need to be "worked" like switches, band changers, pots etc that if you make a radio a "shelf queen", you're gonna be sorry.

 

Once in a while?

 

I've only redlined my 3.4 one single time, on accident. I opened her up on an onramp to merge and thought it was in lo-2 but it was in drive and I upshifted into neutral with the pedal down.
I never made that mistake again. My opinion is, you can open it up, but be judicious about it. Your best performance is under the redline anyway.