Revcounters - who uses them?
Discussion
GetCarter said:
As mentioned... F1 drivers.
And are you an F1 driver? LOLLook... I take your point, revcounters absolutely have their uses on competition vehicles, vehicles that have fragile engines, or particular engine characteristics. However this thread is about using revcounters, when driving on the road in a road legal vehicle. Regular driving (commuting, etc), driving for fun/having a blast - not trackdays/circuits/hillclimbs/sprints/drag-racing/autotests, etc.
It's not that I don't believe in revcounters - I once retrofitted one to a tuned Landrover V8 - however that was being used in competition (trials). It never had a revlimiter as standard and I didn't want to overrev the engine on muddy hillclimbs - never really got the chance to heed it, generally there was too much else going on when the welly was down.
jhonn said:
GetCarter said:
As mentioned... F1 drivers.
And are you an F1 driver? LOLYou may not like rev counters for whatever reason, but many of us here use them for many different reasons. You need to understand that your vision of their use is not that of all of us.
We use them in a different way to you.
GetCarter said:
jhonn said:
GetCarter said:
As mentioned... F1 drivers.
And are you an F1 driver? LOLNo, but some of them I consider my friends.
You may not like rev counters for whatever reason, but many of us here use them for many different reasons. You need to understand that your vision of their use is not that of all of us.
We use them in a different way to you.
Have a nice evening.
Always use mine, usually just a cursory glance before I change gear to make sure i'm not labouring the engine. My rev counter is set with 0 rpm being at the 6 o clock position and 8000 at about the 2 o clock position. When I boot it I pay more attention to the rev counter to make sure I don't bounce off the limiter, and to remind myself what the rev counter looks like past the horizontal position 
If I didn't have one, I feel i'd be robbed of a useful piece of engine info, similar to having no coolant gauge.
If I didn't have one, I feel i'd be robbed of a useful piece of engine info, similar to having no coolant gauge.
GetCarter said:
F1 drivers use them for every gear change (it's on the steering wheel for those that don't know). Why wouldn't they?
Was a real help in my R500
F1 cars haven't had rev gauges for over a decade. What they do have is shift lights and audio cues... "Respect the beeps". Shift lights are a different proposition to having a gauge because you don't have to take your eyes off the road/track to see them.Was a real help in my R500
Every moment spent looking at a gauge is a moment when you're not looking where you're going. Once familiar with the car, constantly referring to the gauges should be unnecessary.
In the original Holden Monaro 327 Bathurst cars, the rev counter was an after thought. It was mounted on the centre console down by the gear stick. I used it for the first couple of laps in practice, until I had a feel for the speeds for gear changes at various parts of the circuit, & then did not look at it again in the next 500 miles.
In open wheelers in those days we had an extra red pointer, a tell tale, which stayed at the highest point the main needle actually reached. This was supposed to tell you what gear ratio you should use to prevent over revving. Of course it more often told you the driver had missed a gear change.
With each gear able to be changed independent of the rest, we wanted to know what revs we had at the apex & exit of each corner. To help with this, we set the rev counters in the panel with the needle vertical at peak revs.
You didn't have to read the thing. Just a glance told you where the needle was pointing, in relationship to vertical, & you could figure out the revs from that while not so busy down the next straight. If you were below the power band, or close to running out of revs on any corner, it was into the pits, so the poor mechanic could burn his hands in hot oil & on hot gears, changing ratios.
Mechanics loved me, they reckoned I was one of the few drivers who could actually read the apex revs right first time, minimising the number of ratio changes they would have to do during practice.
How great it is today, when the mechanic has computer programs to tell them what gears will work, & they can sit in a nice cool pit, watching telemetry, rather than hoping the driver can read his rev counter properly.
As for shift lights, if ever I start to need one of those, I'll give up driving & catch the bus.
In open wheelers in those days we had an extra red pointer, a tell tale, which stayed at the highest point the main needle actually reached. This was supposed to tell you what gear ratio you should use to prevent over revving. Of course it more often told you the driver had missed a gear change.
With each gear able to be changed independent of the rest, we wanted to know what revs we had at the apex & exit of each corner. To help with this, we set the rev counters in the panel with the needle vertical at peak revs.
You didn't have to read the thing. Just a glance told you where the needle was pointing, in relationship to vertical, & you could figure out the revs from that while not so busy down the next straight. If you were below the power band, or close to running out of revs on any corner, it was into the pits, so the poor mechanic could burn his hands in hot oil & on hot gears, changing ratios.
Mechanics loved me, they reckoned I was one of the few drivers who could actually read the apex revs right first time, minimising the number of ratio changes they would have to do during practice.
How great it is today, when the mechanic has computer programs to tell them what gears will work, & they can sit in a nice cool pit, watching telemetry, rather than hoping the driver can read his rev counter properly.
As for shift lights, if ever I start to need one of those, I'll give up driving & catch the bus.
Interesting post as always, Hasbeen- but I might take exception to this;
Hasbeen said:
As for shift lights, if ever I start to need one of those, I'll give up driving & catch the bus.
I was quite grateful for the shift lights on a couple of of the race cars I've driven, those with comparatively high-revving four valve engines and fairly agressive limiters. It sped up the learning process no end. Of course once you've done a few laps and you know the car better you don't need them. 
Some of it is probably habit. I started flying lessons (someone else's money - my parents couldn't afford to fund that themselves) before driving lessons.
Regular checking of instrumentation in the full expectation that nothing has changed since last time is just kinda drummed in from the outset. I frequently glance at my temperature, fuel and oil pressure gauges too.
Of course I could drive without a tachometer, and infact I did in the only car I drove regularly which didn't have one, but I felt somehow exposed. I expect those who have owned fussier engines are in the habit of looking at the available data regardless of what car they're in?
Those 'brought up' without tachometers or indeed with automatics or just modern diesel engines which are better if kept miles from their redlines probably don't feel the need to look at them.
Regular checking of instrumentation in the full expectation that nothing has changed since last time is just kinda drummed in from the outset. I frequently glance at my temperature, fuel and oil pressure gauges too.
Of course I could drive without a tachometer, and infact I did in the only car I drove regularly which didn't have one, but I felt somehow exposed. I expect those who have owned fussier engines are in the habit of looking at the available data regardless of what car they're in?
Those 'brought up' without tachometers or indeed with automatics or just modern diesel engines which are better if kept miles from their redlines probably don't feel the need to look at them.
jamieduff1981 said:
Regular checking of instrumentation in the full expectation that nothing has changed since last time is just kinda drummed in from the outset. I frequently glance at my temperature, fuel and oil pressure gauges too.
The lack of temperature and oil pressure gauges is an annoyance in the MINI.I still occasionally find myself looking for the temp while driving it.
Bloody sight more useful than speedos which are calibrated to unfeasibly high speeds, therefore compressing the important speeds to a smaller section of the dial. My daily driver wouldn't do the 160mph on the speedo if I dropped it out of a plane (come to that it'd struggle at anything with the number '1' first ) . My non daily driver has shift lights but I still tend to drive on the revcounter.
BritishRacinGrin said:
Interesting post as always, Hasbeen- but I might take exception to this;
Yes I can see how you could use them to get a feel in the first couple of laps, as I used the Monaro rev counter. In normal driving, unless you were ready to change gear anyway, you would be over revving by the time you reacted to any shift instruction by light or buzzer.Hasbeen said:
As for shift lights, if ever I start to need one of those, I'll give up driving & catch the bus.
I was quite grateful for the shift lights on a couple of of the race cars I've driven, those with comparatively high-revving four valve engines and fairly agressive limiters. It sped up the learning process no end. Of course once you've done a few laps and you know the car better you don't need them. I have often wondered why drag racers have them in a car doing 5/6 second runs.
Pints I no longer have much interest in oil pressure gauges. I have had a couple of engines run bearings, [not engines I have assembled I might say], & in neither instance did the oil pressure drop at all. I believe that in an engine in good condition, an oil pressure gauge will only tell you the engine has stopped, not that it has a problem.
In clapped out things this is different. With the Oz Ford Capri, [1994 Mazda 323 mechanicals] it's low pressure advised me to go a grade or 2 heavier in its engine oil.
Yes coppice, when I want to make sure I don't exceed the speed limit, I trust my rev counter much more than a speedo, or even the satnav.
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