Can driving blow head gasket?

zamo27

Does driving a car at its max speed , in this case 210km/h 3 or 4 times a week blow a head gasket?!

MarkR

If the car was running perfectly, don't know. Seems it can be caused by the engine overheating, faulty thermostats, bad coolant, leaky radiators.

What type of car is it, and where are you driving it? If it was in Ireland, I hope it's fit for scrap.

zamo27

MarkR wrote: »

If the car was running perfectly, don't know. Seems it can be caused by the engine overheating, faulty thermostats, bad coolant, leaky radiators.

What type of car is it, and where are you driving it? If it was in Ireland, I hope it's fit for scrap.

Why scrap if professionally fixed is it still prone to more damage and repair?

biko

To answer the first post, no.
What car is this for?

CiniO

IMO driving a the engine at full load at high revs is likely to help head gasket to go (assuming it was due going anyway).

swarlb

zamo27 wrote: »

Does driving a car at its max speed , in this case 210km/h 3 or 4 times a week blow a head gasket?!

130 mph, chances are, considering the roads in Ireland, you be dead or badly injured before the gasket went, or at the least be collecting a raft of penalty points.
If an engine is working correctly, there is no reason for the head gasket to fail at any speed. If there is a problem, it could just as easily fail at 5 mph.

Red Nissan

If driving pattern changed in an old car then very likely.

If a car has had a lifetime of sedate driving and then suddenly driven to the max, it will blow, almost certainly.

Driving an engine on is good but must be done from new.

mickdw

I dont agree with the majority here.
If you take a car to its max every other day, chances are, you will develop engine issues sooner or later. Head gasket imo would be a very likely failure if driving regularily in that manner. No doubt, its only getting the minimums in terms of maintenance too.

CiniO

mickdw wrote: »

I dont agree with the majority here.
If you take a car to its max every other day, chances are, you will develop engine issues sooner or later. Head gasket imo would be a very likely failure if driving regularily in that manner. No doubt, its only getting the minimums in terms of maintenance too.

I'd rather agree with Red Nissan.

I usually use the full power of my engine on daily basis. And rev it to it's maximum revs also everyday I drive it.
Never had any problems, but I do keep my vehicles always in good order.

Zascar

Sorry can we please here where/how/why you do your max speed, 3-4 times per week?? Most people will never get close, ever. I'm intrigued.

pablo128

An engine in a car running at max speed is probably running cooler than normal due to the amount of air being pushed through the radiator.
Look at all the cars in Germany which are regularly maxed on the autobahns.

pablo128

Zascar wrote: »

Sorry can we please here where/how/why you do your max speed, 3-4 times per week?? Most people will never get close, ever. I'm intrigued.

Plenty of motorway stretches in Ireland to max a car. I've done it in every car i've owned, at least once.

HandsomeDan

swarlb wrote: »

130 mph, chances are, considering the roads in Ireland, you be dead or badly injured before the gasket went, or at the least be collecting a raft of penalty points.
If an engine is working correctly, there is no reason for the head gasket to fail at any speed. If there is a problem, it could just as easily fail at 5 mph.

???

Where do you think you live, Uganda?

Any amount of roads to max out a car on..

Technoprisoner

driving a car a 20mph everyday could cause the head gasket to go. there are some very strange opinions on here at times

Jesus.

pablo128 wrote: »

Plenty of motorway stretches in Ireland to max a car. I've done it in every car i've owned, at least once.

Be prepared to be swamped by the HHB. I hope you've got your tin hat on.

ba_barabus

Jesus. wrote: »

Be prepared to be swamped by the HHB. I hope you've got your tin hat on.

The Charge of the LightHeaded Bigade .

In answer to the OPs question I do think more info about the car is needed and it's condition. For instance if a pipe burst and leaked at that speed you could easily suffer HGF by the time you notice the overheating and pull up. It doesn't have anything to do with the speed however as a burst pipe can happen at any speed.

mickdw

CiniO wrote: »

I'd rather agree with Red Nissan.

I usually use the full power of my engine on daily basis. And rev it to it's maximum revs also everyday I drive it.
Never had any problems, but I do keep my vehicles always in good order.

I agree that plenty revs are good for an engine but Im not so sure that max revs each time it goes through the rev range is great. I would be of the opinion that an engine pushing a car along at its max speed would be heavily stressed, after all its at its max capability and working against huge drag.

I also dont see any great satisfaction in revving the nuts off your diesel

ba_barabus

mickdw wrote: »

I agree that plenty revs are good for an engine but Im not so sure that max revs each time it goes through the rev range is great. I would be of the opinion that an engine pushing a car along at its max speed would be heavily stressed, after all its at its max capability and working against huge drag.

But HGF has to do with a weakness in the cooling system. If the car is running correctly and serviced properly it just shouldn't happen unless a part fails or it's badly designed.

CiniO

mickdw wrote: »

I agree that plenty revs are good for an engine but Im not so sure that max revs each time it goes through the rev range is great.

Depends as well what you mean by max revs.
Say example petrol engine might have max power at 5500rpm. Red zone start at 6000rpm, while rev limiter cut the fuel supply at 7000rpm.
Surely reving the engine to 7000 on each gear everytime won't do anything good to it.
But revving up to 5500rpm - why not.

I would be of the opinion that an engine pushing a car along at its max speed would be heavily stressed, after all its at its max capability and working against huge drag.

Usually max speed is reached way below maximum revs.
Indeed - engine is under full load, but it doesn't mean it has any negative impact on it.

I also dont see any great satisfaction in revving the nuts off your diesel

Better acceleration.
Best acceleration is achieved when I rev it to about 4000 - 4500rpm on every gear.

Spike Witwicky

CiniO wrote: »

Better acceleration.
Best acceleration is achieved when I rev it to about 4000 - 4500rpm on every gear.

In a diesel? I would have thought most turbo diesels power kicks in around 2500rpm?

CiniO

Spike Witwicky wrote: »

In a diesel? I would have thought most turbo diesels power kicks in around 2500rpm?

Indeed max torque is around that rev.
But all it means, that within the same gear, car will accelerate the best at this rpm range - therefore your "power kick"

But f.e acceleration on 2nd gear at 4000rpm most likely is better than in 3rd gear at 2500rpm.
That's why it makes sense to rev the engine to higher revoultions to obtain maximum acceleration.

swarlb

HandsomeDan wrote: »

???

Where do you think you live, Uganda?

Any amount of roads to max out a car on..

No I don't live in Uganda, the max legal speed limit in Ireland is 120 kph. 210kph, and while it might be easily achievable on plenty of vehicles, the fact is, we don't have a network where it can be achieved safely for more than a few minutes at a time.
Name me one road, with normal day to day traffic, where someone could travel at 130 miles an hour for a constant 15mins, without either being pulled over by the police, or causing an accident.

CiniO

swarlb wrote: »

No I don't live in Uganda, the max legal speed limit in Ireland is 120 kph. 210kph, and while it might be easily achievable on plenty of vehicles, the fact is, we don't have a network where it can be achieved safely for more than a few minutes at a time.
Name me one road, with normal day to day traffic, where someone could travel at 130 miles an hour for a constant 15mins, without either being pulled over by the police, or causing an accident.

Most motorways at late night (f.e. 3am).

toastedpickles

swarlb wrote: »

No I don't live in Uganda, the max legal speed limit in Ireland is 120 kph. 210kph, and while it might be easily achievable on plenty of vehicles, the fact is, we don't have a network where it can be achieved safely for more than a few minutes at a time.
Name me one road, with normal day to day traffic, where someone could travel at 130 miles an hour for a constant 15mins, without either being pulled over by the police, or causing an accident.

The M8

ba_barabus

swarlb wrote: »

No I don't live in Uganda, the max legal speed limit in Ireland is 120 kph. 210kph, and while it might be easily achievable on plenty of vehicles, the fact is, we don't have a network where it can be achieved safely for more than a few minutes at a time.
Name me one road, with normal day to day traffic, where someone could travel at 130 miles an hour for a constant 15mins, without either being pulled over by the police, or causing an accident.

M7, M1, M8, etc etc etc

Jesus.

SwarlB, could we just leave that stuff out for one thread? Just one single thread where questions can be asked and answered without someone going all moral on us? Is that too much to ask?

PLEASE???

swarlb

Jesus. wrote: »

SwarlB, could we just leave that stuff out for one thread? Just one single thread where questions can be asked and answered without someone going all moral on us? Is that too much to ask?

PLEASE???

Fair enough, but the original question is unanswerable to the point of being pointless. Its like asking "how long is a piece of string". There are too many variables. The simple fact is car travelling at 210kph, depending on the car, may have an engine speed of anything between 2000 and 7000 rpm or beyond either way. A 5L engine barely stressed, as opposed to a 1.6 highly stressed, for example.

Bigus

zamo27 wrote: »

Does driving a car at its max speed , in this case 210km/h 3 or 4 times a week blow a head gasket?!

No it won't , look at an average rally car or track cars in mondello , all running standard gaskets and will go all day , week or month flat out without failure.

Stavros Murphy

Spike Witwicky wrote: »

In a diesel? I would have thought most turbo diesels power kicks in around 2500rpm?

I'm driving a new one at the mo that has an onboard "nag" that aims to keep you at 1500 rpm all the time..100 kph at 1500 revs and no noise, for a diesel, is odd, to me. You get to spend about two seconds in each gear before the eco-nag starts looking for an upshift. On the upside, very good fuel economy.

Jesus.

How does that nag manifest itself Stravos? Is it a flashing light or something?

Stavros Murphy

Jesus. wrote: »

How does that nag manifest itself Stravos? Is it a flashing light or something?

A little green knob flashes up on the dash, with an arrow indicating whether said knob wants an upshift or a downshift. Being biddable, I have so far complied fully but the naggy, flashing knob is getting on my hoop. It does seem to have a better grasp of the ideal rev-range than me though, seeing as I can't actually hear what the feck the engine is doing. Whoever put a rev counter on it divided into 500 rev segments all the way up to 6600 was having a laugh as it all happens between 1000 and 2000 and if you go over 2000, I'm guessing the flashey knob has a sh1t-fit.

pablo128

swarlb wrote: »

No I don't live in Uganda, the max legal speed limit in Ireland is 120 kph. 210kph, and while it might be easily achievable on plenty of vehicles, the fact is, we don't have a network where it can be achieved safely for more than a few minutes at a time.
Name me one road, with normal day to day traffic, where someone could travel at 130 miles an hour for a constant 15mins, without either being pulled over by the police, or causing an accident.

That's a bit of a ridiculous question. You're going to travel over 30 miles in that time at that speed. While i may or may not have driven in this manner in the past, it's best practice to kinda keep to a 5 minute blast at a time.

corkgsxr

I dont think the average car is made for it. Like iv a gsxr600 and it seems to have no impact on it. Any car iv reved hard it seems not to like the final 1000 revs to redline.

Maybe cos the car tends to be in the high revs for longer and under load for longer, wheres the bike it gets the job done fast

mickdw

Stavros Murphy wrote: »

A little green knob flashes up on the dash, with an arrow indicating whether said knob wants an upshift or a downshift. Being biddable, I have so far complied fully but the naggy, flashing knob is getting on my hoop. It does seem to have a better grasp of the ideal rev-range than me though, seeing as I can't actually hear what the feck the engine is doing. Whoever put a rev counter on it divided into 500 rev segments all the way up to 6600 was having a laugh as it all happens between 1000 and 2000 and if you go over 2000, I'm guessing the flashey knob has a sh1t-fit.

The gear suggestion on my dash is a bit more Intelligent than that. If I use light acceleration, it calls for a higher gear. If I accelerate harder, it realises that a higher gear would be useless and just disappears. It stops short of suggesting lower gears though - in the name of economy I guess.

CiniO

Stavros Murphy wrote: »

A little green knob flashes up on the dash, with an arrow indicating whether said knob wants an upshift or a downshift. Being biddable, I have so far complied fully but the naggy, flashing knob is getting on my hoop. It does seem to have a better grasp of the ideal rev-range than me though, seeing as I can't actually hear what the feck the engine is doing. Whoever put a rev counter on it divided into 500 rev segments all the way up to 6600 was having a laugh as it all happens between 1000 and 2000 and if you go over 2000, I'm guessing the flashey knob has a sh1t-fit.

I suppose this flashy knob shows you how to drive with using as little fuel as possible.
But by driving at too low rev's you might do harm to DMF as well as turbo.

Driving normally uses very little more fuel than trying to adhere to the flashy knobs, but might actually save you a lot on maintenance.

Jesus.

CiniO wrote: »

But by driving at too low rev's you might do harm to DMF as well as turbo

I was going to mention that too. Its not good to "lug" a diesel.

Depending on the gear ratios, I'd say upshifting early in some diesels might actually burn more fuel. My Kia requires me to be revving at at least 2,200 before going up into 3rd. Anything less and the revs drop to 1k when I shift into third and this is real "lugging" territory. You can hear the motor struggling to keep going. Not good a'tall.

I wonder if I had one of those knobs in that car would it tell me to shift up into third as early as Stravos' does?

Stavros Murphy

CiniO wrote: »

I suppose this flashy knob shows you how to drive with using as little fuel as possible.
But by driving at too low rev's you might do harm to DMF as well as turbo.

Driving normally uses very little more fuel than trying to adhere to the flashy knobs, but might actually save you a lot on maintenance.

My flashy knob, I can assure ye, is fully intelligent, seeing as said knob is attached to Renaults newest and most wonderous demonstrator, bedecked in all the finery France's Van factory can currently produce with every option box known to man ticked..and only on loan to my good self until they can manage to pull their thumb out of their buttocks and deliver the one I actually paid for. Damn nice machine to drive though. And it has so much horsepower/Torque that I'd well believe it would pull away in fourth without lugging..

Red Nissan

Zascar wrote: »

Sorry can we please here where/how/why you do your max speed, 3-4 times per week?? Most people will never get close, ever. I'm intrigued.

Technical issue, not legal.

CiniO

Jesus. wrote: »

I was going to mention that too. Its not good to "lug" a diesel.

Depending on the gear ratios, I'd say upshifting early in some diesels might actually burn more fuel. My Kia requires me to be revving at at least 2,200 before going up into 3rd. Anything less and the revs drop to 1k when I shift into third and this is real "lugging" territory. You can hear the motor struggling to keep going. Not good a'tall.

I wonder if I had one of those knobs in that car would it tell me to shift up into third as early as Stravos' does?

I have one in civic (diesel) and if I adhered to it, I would often cruise at 1300-1400rpm.
I think this can't be good for the car, so I rather try to keep around 1700-2000 rpm when cruising on flat road.
Obviously adequately more when driving up the hill.

Jesus.

CiniO wrote: »

I have one in civic (diesel) and if I adhered to it, I would often cruise at 1300-1400rpm.
I think this can't be good for the car, so I rather try to keep around 1700-2000 rpm when cruising on flat road.
Obviously adequately more when driving up the hill.

I would agree with that.

Its kind of surprising they fit these things that urge you to drive in a way that contradicts accepted conventional wisdom on modern turbo diesels.

Red Nissan

swarlb wrote: »

Its like asking "how long is a piece of string"..

No it is not, really, we all, most of us know the primary causes and they are the same for all road legal vehicles. Regardless.

CiniO

Jesus. wrote: »

I would agree with that.

Its kind of surprising they fit these things that urge you to drive in a way that contradicts accepted conventional wisdom on modern turbo diesels.

Simple.
That way of driving will cause DMF and turbo to fail at some stage, but it's going to be after warranty period anyway, so more cash for manufacturer.

unkel

CiniO wrote: »

But f.e acceleration on 2nd gear at 4000rpm most likely is better than in 3rd gear at 2500rpm.

Nah, not in a modern turbo diesel. Torque curve is pretty much flat from when the turbo kicks in (typically around 1250-2000rpm) until rev limit.

Stavros Murphy

CiniO wrote: »

Simple.
That way of driving will cause DMF and turbo to fail at some stage, but it's going to be after warranty period anyway, so more cash for manufacturer.

5 year warranty/unlimited mileage on this particular yoke, so not sure about that. Could be true, but it seems very relaxed tipping along at low revs. I think it has a very, very narrow power band and that band is very low down.

On the blowing the head gasket by going flat out for a good while, I have it on good authority that it is indeed the case that you can do this, but usually it would be slightly on the way out already. Ahem.

CiniO

unkel wrote: »

Nah, not in a modern turbo diesel. Torque curve is pretty much flat from when the turbo kicks in (typically around 1250-2000rpm) until rev limit.

Yeap.
So that proves my point, doesn't it?

Supergurrier

If you ease up to it and the cooling system is up to spec you will be fine.

I'd be more worried about tyres on a max speed run

pablo128

Supergurrier wrote: »

If you ease up to it and the cooling system is up to spec you will be fine.

I'd be more worried about tyres on a max speed run

Spot on. And one of the reasons I will only put new top brand of tyres on me and the missus's cars. Just in case.

Stavros Murphy

pablo128 wrote: »

Spot on. And one of the reasons I will only put new top brand of tyres on me and the missus's cars. Just in case.

My missus considers 80kph to be "pushing the envelope".

Jesus.

What Motor you got again Stravos?

Stavros Murphy

Jesus. wrote: »

What Motor you got again Stravos?

Not my motor(car) as such, it's my work van, new Master, a demo the dealer gave me till my own arrives - it's the biggest engined version in Executive spec, so pretty posh as vans go. Very nice to drive as it happens, for a big lump of a van. Very naggy though - the radio turns off if you don't clip on your seat belt! As well as the usual beeping etc. Unreal on fuel though, leaves the rest of our vans for dead on the economy front.

pablo128

Stavros Murphy wrote: »

My missus considers 80kph to be "pushing the envelope".

I once got my missus to drive @140 km/h to overtake some cnut who kept speeding up and slowing down. It was her first time driving on a motorway and all.
The asshat tried to overtake her again, and in fairness to her she kept the shoe in, and made him work for his overtake. I almost shed a tear, I was so proud of her!:pac: