So, what is up with the "red zone" on your tachometer? I've always thought that you should not rev the car up into the red zone, but I guess I've seen it done on television and movies.

I revved my Saab into the red once, and maybe past it, and then the engine kind of cut-out for a second. I think this is/was a safety feature... or maybe that was the beginning of the troubles I ended up having with the engine.

So, to make this germaine to this forum, is it safe to rev my 09 Mini Cooper S up into the red zone on the tachometer? What are the concers with "red lining" a car, specifically to engine wear?

Looking forward to hearing your answers!

 

Well there is a rev limiter, but I wouldn't do that at all....that's why it's done in the movies.

 

wait until after yr break in, after which it's fine as long as U dont keep it there for an extended period of time.

 

There is no need to rev into the red zone. The dyno charts out there show that the R56 engine power maxes out in the 5500 to 6000 rpm range. No need to rev past 6500 rpm and risk damage to the engine.

 

The computer cuts fuel at 6500 rpm so you cant do it anyway.

 

The computer cut fuels @ 6500rpm, but on rare occasion I manage to go a bit over it (MCSa).

 

So, does that feel like the engine just stopping for a second, like what happened in the Saab?

Hmmm... and the red zone is like 7-8k RPMs... even though the actual red zone sounds like it is 5.5k-6.5k, eh?

 

Again, there's really no point in going past 6,000 RPM's; nothing good will come of it. At that point, it's time to shift, my friend.

Bouncing off the rev-limiter is a bad thing, and besides: it sounds awful.

Don't hurt your MINI.

 

If you re-enact any other Hollywood stuff please film it for posterity

 

The red zone is 6500-8000 rpm. Yes you can feel it cut fuel and because of this it doesn't really bounce of the rev limiter the way some cars do it simply won't go farther and it actually slows slightly. In my opinion for outright speed it is best to shift at 6300-6400 right before the fuel cutoff just so you are as deep as possible in the power band for the next gear. By the way you shouldn't be above 4500 rpm unless you have more then 1200 mi on your car.

Also there there is no such thing as rpms. The plural is implied in the acronym (revolutions per minute).

 

Like has been said there is a rev limiter that will keep the engine form reving itself over 6500. You can get it over that limit if you have a manual trans and put it in too low of a gear going down hill. This is about the only way you can cause catostrophic damage. The engine is designed to handle the rpm of up to redline and after that you could float valves or cause somthing to break because of too much stress. That being said, I would stay away from redline as much as possible because the more rpm you engine is turning the faster it is wearing out. Besides this engine makes plenty of power down low in the rpm.

 

I keep seeing this around lately, but MCSa = what, exactly? automatic transmission?

 

Yup

 

There was a thread similar to this a while back, and I'm amazed this from time to time comes up.

Why in the world would you want to? The engineers who designed the car specifically put that in as a warning, and with new computer systems can even help prevent it.

I"ll give the same comment I gave in the other thread, that doing it just to see what will happen is kind of like hitting yourself with a hammer to see if it will hurt.

 

Yeah, I have experienced much less of a hard fuel cut out in this car. I guess they have smoothed things out with the computers (since the bouncing off the limiter is worse than going to a slightly higher rpm, but they got to stop you somewhere).

I think part of the question was where is the real limit, and yes the "red" at 6500 is a hard limit its not going to let you past that. On some other cars they give you a little margin but that could just be due to a simpler limiter.

 

Are there any major concerns with revving near 5k rpm when still in the break in period? Because I kind of "accidentally" did that today and I was smelling something funky.

 

if ya have to ask, ya probably shouldn't.

 

You've obviously never raced anyone?

 

As long as the engine is warm there is hardly any damage done by revving the engine into the red zone. You would want to this in autocross-type events when it is faster to keep the car in 2nd gear and have it bounce off the rev-limiter than is to shift to 3rd and then immediately back down to 2nd for a corner.

And, based upon my experiences, the MCS hits the rev-limiter at around 6700-6800 rpm.

 

Nah... I wouldn't worry about accidentally going a few hundred rpm over the prescribed amount just once.

 

If you still have really low miles on yoru car it could be a coating on the exhaust system burning off. It'll stop smelling before long.

 

92 miles. It kind of smelled like burning rubber.

 

Well, if you were really giving it some gas, and the rpm rose especially quickly, then maybe you WERE burning rubber

 

Haha, no definitely not.

 

assuming it wasn't your clutch or the tires it could very well be the exhaust coating.

As someone who bounces off the revlimiter/fuel cutoff quite frequently (at least on the auto-x course) I can say I've had no engine failures yet.