Hey guys, new to the forums here.

I have a question that's probably stupid, but here goes..

I was driving my 04 GT 4.6 on a major road today, about 50mph. I was in fourth gear. A car comes up behind me very fast and got beside me. He was at a higher speed so I tried to downshift to third to keep up with him, but instead went into first gear. My RPM's shot up to about 7,000...well beyond redline(5700). The RPMs were at that level for about 2-3 seconds, then I clutched and put it back in fourth.

So, everything seems fine with the car. There are no smells, loss of power, etc, but this car is new to me, and I have only had a manual since I got this car, about 3 months. But, I am curious to know if you guys think there is any possibility I may have damaged anything? Maybe caused a bit of stress to the engine, or tranny, or both?

I plan on upgrading the garbage shifter with a Steeda Tri-Ax to avoid this from ever happening again, but I'm still a little worried that maybe being at 7K for those few seconds was really bad.

Thanks guys for any input or thoughts on this.

 

Ha...no biggie. The car will be fine. Try not to do it every day.

 

Thanks for the reply. I know I worry too much, but this car's my baby and I don't want to do anything that might harm it or shorten its life.

 

Yeah, mechanical over-revs are scarey. I went from 2nd to 1st dragracing it once, and survived. LOL It's embarrassing. But stuff happens.[:@]

 

It will be fine...what you really need to work on is your reaction time, 3 seconds at 7k! You gotta pull that **** out![8D]

With an a/m shifter its almost impossible to accidentally misshift, it goes where you want it to.

 

True, 2 seconds is more accurate. I just couldn't believe what had just happened, so the reaction time was a little slow.

My last Mustang was a 99, auto. I had always been under the impression that the rev limiter wouls never allow the RPMs to get to 7 grand. Guess that doesn't count when downshifting. [&:]

 

Some cars have a lockout if you're going too fast, but most higher performance cars don't. I guess so you can shift into a gear before you need to, then let the clutch out when you're going slow enough or something, who knows. You might have stretched a connecting rod a tiny bit or something, but nothing too much to be worried about. As long as it still runs fine right now you should be fine.

The rev limiter just cuts fuel when the revs get to a certain point, which doesn't protect from mechanical overrevving as you discovered.

The most harmful force put on a pison is after the end of the combustion stroke, at the top of the stroke, when there are no forces acting on the piston itself. The piston is traveling upwards, and the only thing trying to stop it is the rod. This is why most engines don't use aluminum connecting rods... because they tend to get stretched out more and possibly cause piston/valve interference.