Miata Mailing List: April 1993, Message #6
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   From: (none)
Subject: Re: abuse and headrest speakers
   Date: (none)


I couldn't agree more with Dale (see below). Most cars are designed
for driving. Harder driving causes extended wear, but the likelihood
of something breaking does not get significantly greater. Things break 
even during careful driving, as we all know. 

As a rule: It's driving correctly that matters, not how hard we drive.
Drive the way the car was designed to be driven. I.e. it's a lot
worse to hit the curb during a parking maneuver, than it is to
go drifting with all four wheels through a high speed turn at
6000 rpms. This is a well known fact that's even more evident
for pure race cars. Look at the open wheel classes. If those cars
hit a curb at the wrong place they loose a whole wheel, no matter 
how many G's they can handle during normal race driving. (The 
curb is just an example, there are many other things that we can
do wrong, like missing a gear, riding the clutch, never driving
the car long enough to heat up the oil, never changing brake fluid
or coolant etc.)

Drive your Miata hard and have fun. Be careful to wait until
the engine is plenty warm and make sure the oil is changed
often, and you'll get many hysterically happy miles out of 
you Miata. 

This was my opinion, for what it's worth (as we say).

Michael Englund


>From: emery@sol.ced.utah.edu (Dale Emery)

[...]

>I don't think that any hard driving will damage the car, even in the long
>run.  Some things will wear more, of course, but it was definitely designed
>for hard driving. >To those who rarely let the revs get above 4,000- get a 
>life or get a v8!

[...]

>The Miata has a virtual motorcycle engine!  There's no power down there!
>Get it spinning and it comes to life.  Otherwise it'll get    cholestoral.
>this was BIX.
>
>
>