To make a long story short......I live in Los Angeles (and am the hell out of this hellhole asap, but that's a different story), to where the only place I can go blare my music in in my car in the parking garage. Had a few cocktails, but accidentally floored the petal when I was moving around inside and she did exceed redline for a about a half a second. No more than 2-300RPM over the redline (6500 MAX). Nothing seemed to happen, and I'm sure the UZ is fine, but just throwing this out there for some of you who are more educated in this department. Car is meticulously maintained with fresh oil.

I know this is about the most durable and strongest motor ever designed, but just throwing this out there. She did get into the redline by about 200RPM. It was VERY brief (not even half a second). I'm actually shocked how quickly this motor revs up like that, like seriously.

No rev limiter on our cars when in park? Sort of surprising.

 

Wow, brings back memories of what I did to one of my first cars. If she is acting fine then chances are everything is ok. Just listen for anything weird and monitor your oil for any usage for a few weeks or so.

One of my first cars was an 80 Oldsmobile Cutlas Supreme that was not taken care of with oil changes and driven to the grocery store and back. I did not know this until something similar happened and she revved up and revved down and never started again with that engine. The main bearings seized on the crankshaft due to lack of oil lubrication because of sludge. Then I rebuilt the engine and she ran for another 6 years. What a pos that car was compared to the Lexus.... Lol

Anyway, these engines are great and I would say most likely your are fine. Just monitor her as mentioned and check for oil usage.

 

Hitting the limiter is not over-revving. Over-revving is when you moneyshift from 4th to 1st instead of 3rd or from 5th to 2nd instead of 4th.

Hitting the limiter, while not adviseable, is perfectly fine for the engine if it happens once in a blue moon. That's why the limiter is set, so the engine doesn't reach a point where you damage something.


I wouldn't worry

 

If you read his post Don he said he went 2500 - 3k over the redline implying he hit 8k rpm's or so.

 

I believe he said that the went 250-300 rpm over 6,500. But I think the redline on these cars is actually 6,200.

The most important question was - how long was the car on prior to this? If you drove more than 5 miles or so, the oil was warmed up and everything is probably fine.

If something happened, you'll find out soon enough.

Our engine, the 3UZ, is basically a very detuned racing engine. If you upgrade the oil pump, connecting rods, and port the heads, you can run the motor to 8000 rpm or so and it'll be fine.

It's discomforting to think about the engine, but it's probably fine. Good luck moving to a place with breathing room!

 

Oh, you are right air. I misread as well... lol

 

i dont think our engines would ever see 8k rpm's.would blow long before that.

 

Thanks, as always for the prompt answers. I'm honestly not too worried about it (I know a thing or two about motors, esp ours, but just don't give me a wrench lol) but felt saying something on here wouldn't hurt.

Car hadn't been driven but was comfortably in normal operating temp, as I had sat idle for at least 25 minutes before this happened. Coolant was normal. I don't see how the oil couldn't have been warm enough by then.

And ah, yes, "breathing room." It's non existent out here. I have to, as said, go down to my parking garage and sit in the LS to get my fix of loud music (bc I wouldn't wanna wake up a neighbor in the apartment here that costs $2,000 a month). We are leaving in a month, though. Back to Knoxville.

Thanks again, guys. If there's any motor on earth that could handle an accident like that, I'd say it's the UZ.

 

That's good news. Remember, it is not good to idle a vehicle longer then 15 min without driving it. You can damage the catalytic converters by doing this.

 

I hit 6500 max, and it was for such a short amount of time I can't even speculate bc it was that brief.

Thanks again for your help!

 

I've exceeded redline under torque briefly (while manually shifting) and never had an issue.

 

i've heard this too and don't necessarily disagree. On the other hand, anybody who's lived in Tokyo knows each night the long lines of Toyota Celsiors lined up outside the nightclubs and restaurants quietly idling, hour after hour, waiting for the bosses to emerge and get their ride home. I always wondered how hard this was on the engines but then again the Japanese keep their cars a couple years and then sell...maybe they don't care.

 

Cars run rich when idling and it is known to dirty the engine and damage the cats. It also states this in the owners manual. The same applied for my ls400.

 

I wouldn't really worry about the idling the cats to death.

Once they're up to operating temperature, it's fine. And the first cat in our cars is right off the exhaust header - it heats up right away.

The admonishment about idling your car has more to do with idling the car and then shutting it down without driving it. The cats need to get up to operating temperature (~600 degrees or so inside the cats IIRC) to burn off the rich exhaust byproducts of a cold engine. The worst thing that can happen is that you do this below freezing, and the water in your exhaust freezes in the cats and ruins the membrane/honeycomb/catalyzing materials.

Cats heat up from the exhaust flow which is basically proportional to the fuel flow rate. At idle, our cars seem to guzzle about a gallon per hour. Cruising @ 70 and getting 25 mpg, they're flowing 2.8 gallons per hour. You heat up your exhaust quite a bit faster when you flow 3x as much fuel. Hence the advice to drive a car to warm it up.

Different strokes for different folks though, I've datalogged old cars and sometimes it takes them 15 minutes to warm up the cats (from a 0 degree start) and in the summer, sometimes they only take 5 minutes to reach operating temperature.


I'd give a stock motor a 50/50 shot of surviving a run to 8k without an engine load.

You wouldn't know it from our cars, but the 3UZ is very formidable. Toyota didn't put them in many cars because it's such a high precision and expensive engine.


We could derail this thread with a discussion of 'why does the 3UZ redline so low' but it was 100% a conscious effort by toyota. The bottom end of the 3UZ is pure race car, the connecting rods up are pure luxury car. The head is pure race car. The pistons, camshafts, and connecting rods are unfortunately not for race cars.

In fact, Toyota used the 3UZ as an engine in their GT500 car.

tl;dr cats need heat, heat comes from driving not idling but in LA it doesn't matter probably. Our engines belong in a race car, but Toyota is such a master of the universe, you'd never know it.

 

Dude, seriously, such good info. That was a nice read.