By mistake I hit the manual gear on my camry 2013. Luckily traffic was bad so I was driving for a few minutes around 40 mph and reached 60. The engine was noisy but I didn’t know what’s going on until later. I switch back to auto mode and elnoise went away.
How bad is that? Do I have to do sthg?
I don’t feel it’s a problem with such a short time. The computer would not allow the shift if the car was over revved and the car is too new to be hurt.
Thanks dagosa
How do I know if it has damaged anything in the engine? I don’t hear any noise?
Like Dagosa said, it didn’t hurt anything so nothing to worry about. It would have maybe been around 4000 rpm is all for a short time which is not that high. Plus as mentioned most cars now the computer will start to limit the rpms when it gets into the red or danger zone.
Yes, @dagosa and @Bing are correct. If you want to destroy an engine holding the throttle wide open in 1st or 2nd gear would eventually cause a problem but all the engines that I have run to red line to test have begun to surge badly.
Besides the transmission not allowing the shift, the computer should also prevent the engine from exceeding the red line (max rpm). If the engine was over-revving you would know it.
If it makes you feel better, check the oil on a regular basis to make sure it’s not using any.
As edb1961 and others have said, the computer will prevent you from downshifting into a gear that will cause harm, even in ‘manual’ mode. But if you were driving for quite a while with the engine close to redline, that’s not great for it. How long would you say the engine was “noisy” before you noticed it?
You probably didn’t do any harm, but if you were driving that way for an hour or more, yes, it might have caused some wear, especially if you’re a little lax on oil changes.
You don’t need to worry. Folks often aren’t used to revving their engines to high, but entirely harmless, rpms. For the amount of time you describe, I’d be amazed if any harm was done.
Ditto, everyone else’s no problems comments.
You just gave your engine a good little workout.
Back in the carburated era, that is exactly what people would do to ‘‘blow the carbon out’’ without driving 100 mph to attain that rpm.
My manual transmission 1954 Buick used to load up with carbon. I would pour some Casite Motor Tune-Up in the gas tank, fill the tank and drive about 100 miles. I would then take the car out on the highway, shift it into second gear and take it up to 75 or 80 mph. The black smoke would come pouring out of the exhaust pipe. When the smoke subsided, I would shift into high gear. After that, the car would run as smooth as silk. I bought the car from my Dad and between the 2 of us, we wracked up 160,000 miles on the car before I sold it. It never had the heads or the pan off the engine and two years later it was still on the streets.
Engines are now much better and the fuel injection keeps the engines from being loaded up with carbon, but you did no harm to your engine. In fact, it probably did it some good.
Yes, most modern cars are made with engine governors that will limit the RPM of an engine so it is very hard to do damage. The only way to over rev a modern engine is to force rev it where you have a manual transmission and downshift to a very low gear without slowing down. Since you have a computer controlled system, this shouldn’t be allowed to happen. Of course Toyota gained some unwelcome publicity a few years ago about some possible computer malfunctions so they can happen.
As for blowing out the carbon in a modern car, I have found that sucking some distilled water into the engine through a vacuum line does a great job of cleaning out the combustion chamber and heads of an engine. Have you ever seen the insides of an engine with a head gasket leak? You can tell exactly where it is leaking as the offending cylinders are perfectly clean.
The big thing about modern cars is just keeping them running long enough to warm up and blow all the water and unburned fuel out of the crankcase through the PCV system. You will get milky goo sludge forming inside the engine if you don’t drive it enough. I know a person who took so many short trips that the mechanic told them they had a head gasket failure because the oil looked so milky. More testing showed what appeared to be nothing wrong so he drove it a while and took some longer trips and this never happened again.
Not a problem at all. The Camry’s computer will not allow you to run the engine at an RPM point that will damage it.
Yep, yep. Actually my wife did the same thing with our Acura when it had 7 miles on it. She was driving it home from the dealer 50 miles and wasn’t familiar with the manual mode. So who knows how long she went or how high the revs were, but she said it sounded strange for probably 10 miles till she figured it out. Never had a bit of problem with it and never used oil in the 60K miles we owned it. Not to worry.
Some years back my elderly mom called all upset, saying her '95 (I think) Protoge sounded terrible. I went to her house, we took the car on the highway, and as soon as I engaged overdrive the noise became normal. She was so relieved. Turns out my sister had borrowed her car and disengaged the OD. My mom’s car ran perfectly for years after.
Wasn’t it nice to feel the power of 2nd gear.
Thanks guys. The RPM never reached the danger/red zone. The strange sound scared me but now I know no damage occurred.
Thanks.