hey, i was having a little fun in my M3 the other day, and for kicks, i decided to let her rip from a stop sign, the tires started spinning and my revs went way up, and i looked at my tach quickly, and my revs were at i think, 7500 (my car redlines at 6500).....how bad is this for my engine??

p.s. im past the 1000 km break-in period and i've only done this once....well, twice, but the second time i let off the gas earlier.....

like, when people drift, dont they just fly around corners at redline??

 

I wouldn't exceed redline if I were you. (Although I take mine regularly right up to it.)

The higher the revs, the harder it is on your car. When you spin the tires, you most likely are high up in the rev range, doesn't mean it's not bad for the car. (I'm sure the drift guys have to work on their cars all the time for busted trannys and motor mounts/blown motors.)

 

so every once in a while is okay then right?? i wont blow a piston thru the head then eh? lol
cuz take for example a car with a redline of 7k in a video game, when u drift, they tach bounce back and forth between 8-9k rpms.....how does that work?? is it a rev limiter

and do mazda3's have rev limiters??

p.s. my auto teacher said something about piston float??

 

He was probably talking about floating a valve. Basically you get the engine spinning faster than the valve springs can handle, so the camshaft "gets away" from the lifter and the valve operates in a pattern which it isn't designed for. This is VERY hard on your drivetrain and is a good way to bend a valve. If the valve isn't where it's supposed to be during the compression cycle, you could have contact between the piston and the valve. The valve springs keep the lifters in contact with the camshaft.

If you look at high-revving valvetrain, they are always dual or even triple spring set-ups (one inside another, run in parallel) to get sufficient spring force to keep the lifters in contact with the cam at high revs.

As far as I know the powerband of the 2.0/2.3L drops off after 6,000 rpm, so you'd probably be faster shifting there rather than at redline anyway. I've only taken my car to the track once, so I wasn't very consistent. (took my brother-in-law to the races for his birthday so he could run his Saturn legally down the track for once.) I'm used to rear wheel drive vehicles and launching FWD takes some getting used to.