What is something you didn't know about your car?
You guys are going to love this. I have a 2007 Chevy Silverado 2500 Duramax turbo diesel with quite a few upgrades, including a built transmission. Built transmissions generate more heat than stock, so I thought it prudent to upgrade to a BD diesel remote mount transmission cooler with its own fan. Following the instructions, they indicated that the new cooler was to replaced the OE cooler, so I did exactly that.Fast forward to last week when I took a vacation 1400+ miles away to Colorado towing my two side by sides.Everything was fine until I hit the mountains in Colorado on day 2 of the drive. Suddenly my trans temps started rising and if I didn’t stop to let it cool, temperatures would have gone over 240 degrees. WTF I thought! I have this awesome new cooler with a fan! Why is it overheating!?!? The last leg of the trip took 5 hours longer than it should have due to this. Unfortunately the town I was visiting had zero resources for auto parts so I couldn’t do anything while I was there. I figured I’d just enjoy my week riding my toys and worry about it later since there were no parts to be had and I just didn’t know what to do yet anyway.On my return trip, temperatures in the area rocketed to close to 100 degrees once we got out of the mountains and my temperature started to get close to 230 and rising quickly. I stopped in the town of Grand Junction CO, and contacted a local diesel performance shop. Here is where I learned something about my truck that I didn’t know - actually I learned two things. First, the transmission cooler I bought was meant to be used in addition to the stock transmission cooler, and, the truck actually has two transmission coolers from the factory! I thought I was bypassing one cooler that didn’t work very well with the upgraded transmission but I was actually bypassing two, which obviously offered more cooling than one aftermarket cooler. If I had known that, I wouldn’t have replaced them both with one and instead would have rethought the installation.In case you’re wondering what I did, I patched up the transmission lines and included the two stock coolers with the aftermarket unit, giving me 3 transmission coolers. On my back in a parking lot with basic tools. In 96 degree heat. yeah, it was fun. Luckily there was a NAPA parts store in town that had all the parts I needed to get up and running. The rest of the trip my temperatures never exceeded 208 degrees even up huge mountains and in high temperatures.
How does a high RPM affect the engine?
First thing that happens in higher rpm is your engine oil reaching higher temperatures than normal. When they are in contact with the cylinder side walls they move up and reach out the piston rings. Prolonged exposure of very high temperatures would eventually affect your piston rings and they lack sealing the combustion pressure.Second thing is your camshafts. They are more strained than normal and can even break the heads of your intake and exhaust valves.In case if it is a turbocharged, very high rpm would defiantly raise the inlet air temperature which might lead to early ignition inside the cylinders (if inter-coolers are not present) and might severely damage the engine.So considering all factors you can rev up to 75- 80% of your rev counter's maximum limit.
Nissan 240sx or Mazda rx7?
The RX-7 is not unreliable. I have a 1982 (gen 1) on it's first engine, no rebuilds, still plenty of power for the 12A N/A. Over 200 000 km on the engine. It's a better handling car, it's a better looking car, and the differences in how you treat it isn't that different. The only differences in maintenance are engine internals, and as long as you don't do something stupid like up your boost without the right fuel map and upgraded injectors, you should be fine. Stock, the RX-7 of all generations was quite reliable.
What causes a car to lose power while driving?
In modern cars with engine management systems, it is the system itself that reduces power if it detects a problem with the engine. A warning light will come and and the engine will go into 'limp home' mode, where speed it usually limited to 80km/h or lower. Any number of things can cause this, but usually it relates to loss of something important, like a coolant leak, or low oil pressure. Sometimes it can also be a false positive due to a fault in the management system itself.All internal combustion engines require three things to work; compression, fuel and ignition. Degradation of any one of theses will result in lower engine performance.Loss of compression can result from engine wear, common in engines with several hundred thousand kilometers on the clock. Engine efficiency is lost because gasses can escape past the piston rings. Mechanical failure such as a blown head gasket can cause a similar loss.Blockages or degradation of the fuel supply, such as a worn fuel pump will cause loss of power for obvious reasons.Ignition faults stem from things such as a cracked distributor head, worn spark plugs, worn ignition coil or faulty spark plug leads. They generally result in some cylinders not igniting the fuel/air mix, thus reducing the power.Loss of lubricant or coolant will cause the engine to overheat and then seize. In this case, loss of power is 100%.Worn bearings in the engine will usually not reduce power much, they will keep working, making more and more noise, and then fail catastrophically, causing the engine to seize.It is also possible for timing chains to slip, adjustment screws to loosen in the carburetor, exhaust manifolds to develop leaks , and other minor mechanical faults to occur that will reduce engine power. This can happen suddenly or gradually over time.