The first thing I learned about cars when rebuilding my own engines as
a teenager was not to lug the engine. You could drive an amercian v8
that way, but not the imports we were into. And definitely not a VW.

But the torque issue is a little bit self-governing in that small,
"high-revving" engines show their discomfort at low RPM so people tend
not to drive them that way. The silent killer is higway speed, in my
opinion, where the engine doesn't tell you until much later that you're
pushing it.

So no argument here about the fact that torque kills. You can tear an
engine up either way, but I think most people kill these engines by
trying to keep up with everybody else on the interstates, not chugging
around the neighborhood in top gear.

On Sep 1, 2004, at 8:40 AM, George Goff wrote:

> I keep hammering on the same theme: torque is god and torque kills, not
> speed.  Lugging a modern engine will queef it out long before running
> it at redline
> will.  Under the same conditions, the components of an engine are more
> lightly loaded at high revs than at low speeds.  Although I'm
> repeating myself, I
> have to ask: If you have a pallet of bricks to move by yourself, would
> you
> scurry back and forth carrying them two at a time or would you grab a
> corner of the
> pallet and try to lift it until you pop a hernia?
>
> This is something of which I see little concern by those popping these
> killer
> (how apropos) motors into a V-gone's engine bay.  Just because they fit
> doesn't mean they are fitting.
>
> George
>