A friend was telling me that most of the new four strokes you can red line the heck out of them. Any thoughts? not sure what to believe.... I'm so happy that i got a bike that i can legally ride on the road now. I live in Connecticut with out many places to ride, 45min outside Manhattan. but have been finding many trails to ride now. Anybody from CT? Todd I felt your pain today. Almost ran out of gas. Hit reserve and probablly just made it to the gas station. How many miles do you get once you hit reserve? really thinking about the tank mod.Also one other question on an old topic. Replacing the front sproket to the 13t and the rear. Can someone really discribe the difference in performance. Thanks....

 

Do you have a car? It is more than likely a four stroke, do you rev the hell out of it all the time? If not why not?

 

In my opnion yes, you can rev the **** out of any well built modern engine. It's designed for it. It's durability will depend on who made it (to some degree), how worked over it is and how conservative the redline actually is. Most passenger cars have VERY conserative redlines.

My case studies:

1991 Toyota Tercel. I beat the hell out of that motor. It saw redline daily in 1st gear. 120,000 miles and 10 year later and it still ran perfect, never burned a drop of oil... the oil never even got dirty between changes. I even towed a motorcycle on a trialer with that thing. My CBR600 had 98HP, my Toyota had 92HP.

2001 CBR600F4i - This saw redline every time I threw a leg over it. IT was on the racetrack for 2000 of it's 30,000 miles before I sold it. Ultimately I killed the transmission doing cluthless shifting, but a teardown of the motor after the tranny failed showed that all wear components still looked practically new. I also used Mobil 1 15W50, not motorcycle oil. Redline was 14,200 on that motor. I once overreved it on a downshift it to 15,000.

My KLX sees redline all the time. It's hard not to with such a small motor that runs so somoothly. Manufactureres make the rev limiters conservgative enough that it could be ridden at redline continously and not do any damage. THe key is valve float. If you are under the point at which the valve springs can no longer keep up, then you are OK. I trust that he connecting rod and wrist pin and desigen conservatively enough not to fail.

You're more likely to damage the motor underreving it (knocking) with hard accleration under 2000 RPM than overreving it.

Will the motor life be shortened. Sure it will. The motor life is pretty much dependant on how many strokes the engine makes. Overtime it wears out. I figure the motor is good for at least 2000 hours before a rebuild. Thats about 800 million motor revolutions figuring an average of 7000 RPM. The lower the RPM's the less revolutions the motor makes.