Your automatic Taurus had five speeds?
E.) engine temperature ?
Just a guess
My guess is engine temp as well. When you rev too much, there’s usually a limiter anyway.
Coldy here in the states we call that a “governor.” Keeps the engine from over reving.
Nope. “C”-- Overheating, speed, and electrical power quickly become irrelevent with no oil.
I beg to differ! I once drove my then 8 year old Peugeot 205 (1.4 liter 4 cylinder, reliable as hell itself) for over 100 kilometers with no oil whatsoever. I didn’t know that at the time, I only thought it was losing cooling fluid, but when I arrived at the garage, they told me it was completely out of oil as well. I kept it under 110 km/h on the motorway, so the revs must have been some 3000 rpm’s in fifth. It heated up a bit more then normal, but it did not overheat. After a checkup, the engine showed no damage whatsoever and I drove it for many more happy km’s.
So I guess it can be done, although it is quite logical that a 300 horse power Jeep is more likely to overheat without oil than a 75 horse power li’l Peugeot.
I used to think all the guages were irrelevant, but now I don’t like driving a car with just a light instead of a temperature meter. I’ve been stuck overheated in the desert once too often.
I drive stick, and no car I have ever owned has had a tach. You learn to shift by the “feel” when the car doesn’t respond the way it should to more gas, you shift. It’s that simple. I taught my wife to drive stick without a tach, and she has no problem finding the optimal shift points. It’s not that hard to do. You only really need two meters in a car: speed and gas. Anything else is just fancy-schmancy extras built for guys who believe even their penises should have pressure guages.
Ummm, not quite. Tachs, even in automatics, are important to be able to monitor your idle speed. The idle either going up or down (after warm-up) can indicate problems. Also, if you notice the idle fluctuating (going up and down) it can also be indicative of problems.
Another use for tachs, other then for shifting, is for monitoring how hard you’re dogging the engine. The speedometer tells you how fast your going when your hauling ass, but a tach will tell you exactly how much strain you’re putting on the engine. Without a tach, you could very well be hauling ass down the highway with the radio blaring on a long road trip and have the engine running at excessive RPM’s over a long period of time. Redlining the engine a little from time to time isn’t that bad, but going on a long trip on or near redline the whole time WILL kill your engine.
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And you can tell you speed with a tach, too, if you know your gears. So all you really need are: tach, fuel, an oil pressure(not absolutely necessary, but definately nice to have (see below)
More spalling the bearings, grinding the cam down and pulling off piston rings than overheating.