Revcounters - who uses them?

[jhonn]

Poopipe said:

I use mine a lot cos I have a big shouty miltek exhaust which ruins the sound of the engine so much I have no frigging idea how fast its spinning round.

Bloody horrible noise

I can see how you chose your username.

[luckystrike]

I will say it's a little surprising how many people are coming across as being glued to it religiously.

I like having one as a point of reference (but then I like vacuum gauges too ) and I will glance occasionally, but surely I'm not alone in being able to select an appropriate gear purely from throttle response, engine note and a vague idea of what speed you're going roughly? I'll only really look at mine when driving if I'm giving it the absolute beans and want/need to time the shift perfectly, and then I'll rely on my ears to get me most of the way round the counter before looking for the last 500/1000rpm or so (depending on car or bike). And again, that's only if absolutely nailing it - standard spirited driving or riding and my ears tell me most of what I need to know.

As mentioned above people used to get by fine without them before. non-rev counter golfs even had a little red dot on the speedo showing the 'safe' shift point for each gear:

[Chas88]

I check it pretty much every journey. I imagine it's partly out of habit because I do it on automatic cars as well.

[jhonn]

luckystrike said:

... non-rev counter golfs even had a little red dot on the speedo showing the 'safe' shift point for each gear:

Good post - that little red dot was the analogue version of the digital shift light.

[veevee]

budfox said:

The car I used it in most was my Z4. Mainly because the 3.0 had such beautiful power delivery it was the only way I knew that I was in 4th/6th gear.

+1

N52 revs so smoothly it's possible to absent-mindedly leave it in second out of a junction/roundabout and not realise until one of the needles on the dash is pointing in a bit of an unusal direction.

[okie592]

Yes when I watch it go from 800 too 4500 when I'm revving the tits off my turbo diesel white vag product

[750turbo]

stargazer30 said:

I use mine all the time in my car. Its an FN2 CTR so you kinda have to.

You might be doing it a wee bit wrong, turn the radio down a wee tad

[Urban Sports]

okie592 said:

Yes when I watch it go from 800 too 4500 when I'm revving the tits off my turbo diesel white vag product

A rev counter is as useful whether it's a 4500 diesel VAG effort or a free revving S2000 at 9000, why wouldn't it be?

[okie592]

Urban Sports said:

A rev counter is as useful whether it's a 4500 diesel VAG effort or a free revving S2000 at 9000, why wouldn't it be?

I was being serious. I have a white golf tdi

[Slidingpillar]

56Lotus said:

No speedo only a rev counter in my Lotus
snip

A speed measuring device is compulsory after some date in the 30s. Conversions based on revolutions have been deemed not satisfactory in the past, but its not the sort of thing that gets a big fine and construction and use offences are rather complex. I very much doubt that anyone will care unless you draw their attention to it and/or fail the attitude test big time.

I've fitted a light aircraft rev counter to my vintage car as being totally deaf and no sycromesh makes the needed double declutching a bit tricky.

[jhonn]

Conscript said:

...what's so outrageous about people not using them? I wouldn't say they are essential for day to day driving.

Quite. Maybe it's partly pyschological.. in this forum (in particular), it's maybe a wee bit non-PH to admit to not needing streams of data verifying that you're in the zone and in perfect synchronicity with your machine.

[Urban Sports]

okie592 said:

Urban Sports said:

A rev counter is as useful whether it's a 4500 diesel VAG effort or a free revving S2000 at 9000, why wouldn't it be?

I was being serious. I have a white golf tdi

I have no reason to disbelieve you.

[Murray1986]

Quite alot when accelerating. I want to get every last bit out of whatever I'm driving. If it revs to 7000rpm then it gets taken there thats why I bought whatever I have rather than a eco box.

All that crap about feeling the power drop off is rubbish, still more power at that point than changing up, plus your further up the rev range once you change.

[Urban Sports]

Murray1986 said:

Quite alot when accelerating. I want to get every last bit out of whatever I'm driving. If it revs to 7000rpm then it gets taken there thats why I bought whatever I have rather than a eco box.

All that crap about feeling the power drop off is rubbish, still more power at that point than changing up, plus your further up the rev range once you change.

Yet in my 320d I use it to make sure I change gear before the power drops off

[TheInsanity1234]

jhonn said:

Triumph Man said:

I've never owned a car without a rev counter.

I had one once - a clapped-out original Beetle - it didn't need a revcounter - it just wouldn't rev!

I wonder if there is a modern car on the market that doesn't have one as standard? I suspect that manufacturers fit them to the cooking, mundane models of their cars to give a sporty image.

Can tell you for a fact the Skoda Citigo doesn't have them. And nor do the older Aygos.

[J4CKO]

I like having it there but I don't need to look at it as the engine note changes the more I rev it, which is typical I believe....

The louder and more frantic the engine sounds, then the nearer I am getting to its rev limit, however, acceleration drops off and I can feel that this is the time to change up, I don't need a dial to tell me that, I match revs on downshifts, I don't need to look at it then either, it is feel, you know when you have got it right.

Like Guitartech mentioned, not all cars used to have rev counters and we managed, I think most of it is we like having some indication of how fast the engine is going and it looks kind of funky, but if all rev counters were disabled overnight by a solar storm, a very selective solar storm, nothing would happen.

I really dont need to know that my engine is doing 4000 rpm, I can hear the thing making a racket, I never think "I am doing 5000 rpm, I best back off", again, my ears pick up the engine is going fairly quickly.

For some it lets them know, in quiet cars, that the engine is running but I really dont think we should be looking at it all the time.

[jhonn]

Murray1986 said:

.. still more power at that point than changing up..

Don't quite understand what point you're making there - if you want to keep max acceleration, once peak power starts tailing off there's no point in staying in that gear - time to change-up. It's not always fastest taking it to the limiter. (Well, at least that's my experience anyway)

[Matthen]

J4CKO said:

think "I am doing 5000 rpm, I best back off", again, my ears pick up the engine is going fairly quickly.

I use mine as a deterrent for cruising at high speed. If I glance down and its over 3.5k rpm in top, I know I need to back off or risk points. And that fact that the car stops sipping diesel and starts chugging it means i'm going to get hit in the wallet either way.

Note sounds sweet enough till 4.2k - the last 800 rpm add very little to the current speed, and god it sounds awful

[jhonn]

J4CKO said:

For some it lets them know, in quiet cars, that the engine is running but I really dont think we should be looking at it all the time.

I've never owned a car that quiet - one day Id like to. I wonder if people with electric cars miss them?

Any Tesla owners here?

[JakeT]

Matthen said:

I use mine as a deterrent for cruising at high speed. If I glance down and its over 3.5k rpm in top, I know I need to back off or risk points. And that fact that the car stops sipping diesel and starts chugging it means i'm going to get hit in the wallet either way.

Note sounds sweet enough till 4.2k - the last 800 rpm add very little to the current speed, and god it sounds awful

That is me also. OVer 4k and it's really quite high revs to be sitting at and that corresponds to 80mph. But I like having a rev counter to look at. I know when the engine is properly warm also when the idle revs drop to 750RPM. Also my Fiesta is a sporty one so has sporty white dials...