"Guy Perry" wrote in message
y.telekom.at...
David B wrote:


But yes they can be a bit smoke on start up. Once running however I dare
any car driver to floor his (diesel) car against its rev-limiter and not
be scared of either the engine falling to bits or large amounts of smoke
coming out.

I've only hit the rev limiter once in a diesel-engined car, and that was
years ago when I was pulling out into traffic in a situation where there was
very little gap between cars and I'd been waiting five minutes for someone
to take pity on me and let me in. The sensation of hitting the rev limiter
was not nice: rather than simply preventing the throttle opening any wider,
it actually cut the power for a fraction of a second, then reapplied it and
so on repeatedly, rather like ABS applies and releases the brakes
intermittently. For the second or so before I'd changed up to second, the
car behind was lost in a cloud of black smoke ;-)

Normally there's no need to floor the accelerator: diesels produce maximum
power and torque well below the maximum engine speed (eg at around 2000 rpm
whereas the limit is around 5000 rpm) so if you go much beyond this speed,
the car accelerates less well than if you keep changing up when the engine
reaches about 2500 rpm. But in the heat of the moment when you want to get
out of a tight situation, you tend to forget to change gear!