Does your Daily Driver see Wide open Throttle
 

I was talking with a few friends and discussing our daily drivers. We were talking about when we were younger and how frequently we stomped on the gas pedal just to hear that four barrel sound. Now as an adults I dont think I have stomped on my daily driver just to hear it roar. I have probably done 3/4 on the highway to merge with traffic. One reason is I dont want to damage something and pay or it. Although just recently had to put a rebuilt motor in the Avalanche. The second reason is I feel like modern vehicles are not as strong/reliable. The place I took the Avalanche to be repaired, gave me a loaner Honda Accord. I stomped on that little thing and took the corners way to fast. The Honda had good off the line acceleration and gutless in the middle.
What about you guys ,do you drive your daily drivers like you stole them?

Although...I don't mash the pedal like I did as a naive youth and wind it out (don't wanna break anything), I do love an otherwise aggressive acceleration. I love to hear the rumble from my hemi Ram 1500...I think they got the exhaust note perfect on it.

I drive like an old man in either vehicle most of the time but mainly due to gas prices...I have a rental for the weekend to go to Minnea so all bets are off!

TA, I'm with you, all the same reasons...
Although my 2005 1/2 ton Chevy, 5.3 with 3.73 (towing package) hauls the bacon when needed

Yes, but it's an electric so it doesn't give me much joy when I do that.. it's a bit dull..

2004 impala beat / on the gas heavy on it all the time has 119,000 on it got it with 60,000 on it from my Dad

TA, I'm with you, all the same reasons...
Although my 2005 1/2 ton Chevy, 5.3 with 3.73 (towing package) hauls the bacon when needed

The engines, yes. Modern automatic transmissions...not so much.

Those 3 speeds autos from the big 3 held up to some pretty good abuse and most were never properly serviced or even serviced at all.

I only open them up when my old man driving (doing that since my mid 20's) makes the idle a bit shaky. Once up to normal operating temp, I'll give the engine a pretty good rev getting on the freeway and the idle is smooth as silk again at the next stop light. About 4-5 times a year for my daily drivers.

I floor it once in a while if I'm passing on a 2 lane.... or if I decide to road rage.. LOL..

My 420hp truck has plenty of power so I usually don't need to floor.

I have a Neon SRT4 that gets a good workout. The more rust that falls off the quicker it goes.:D

I had a deleted and tuned 2008 GMC Duramax that was my daily driver from 2012-2019 the throttle on that truck was so addictive. That thing got driven hard everywhere and I miss it. The truck that replaced it is a 2019 GMC 1/2 ton 5.3. it feels very slow in comparison and I hardly have a desire to step on it.

My wife’s tuned 335 BMW is a bit more fun and gets a work out when I drive it.

Same here. My 06 Silverado with the same equipment will downshift to first when I hit the pedal hard and stay on it until I'm at merging speed. That low gear in the 4L60 will rev up to 5300 rpm (factory tach) before shifting to second. Truck has 205,000 miles and still just as strong as ever.

Everything I own see WOT on a regular basis....that's half the fun!

My 2500 GMC rarely just merging. However I do like to corner in the 50-70 mph range depending on corner and roads I'm in the country lots of hills and cattle farms.

Yes, almost every time I take them out.

Hell my daily has long tubes, a cam, intake, exhaust etc etc, so you have to give it wot everyday.

Yes Often!!

Those have transmission issues even when driven normally. Change the fluid often.

Gotta see black smoke from my Duramax every once in awhile. Nothing like when I was younger though. The question would have been “when don’t you give it WOT……”

NOPE....my DD is a '14 Maxima SV Sport with the factory CVT. It barely has enough margin for the torque capacity of the engine, and is at its design limit.

So I change the CVT fluid and filter way more often than necessary and mostly baby it. The more money I have to spend on it, the less money I have for the Lamnas.

Drove the 472 Pontiac hard on the Work commute. Its a dog eat dog world on the commute. Sold it.
So now i drive the Towncars in the pack, and not a jam car.

My daily driver '67 Falcon sees full throttle often, trying to get the wimpy six to keep up with traffic!

Yes! That 6.2L AMG engine sounds SO GOOD at 7200 RPM and WOT, plus it's normally aspirated. No turbos to muffle the exhaust.

507 HP sounds wimpy these days, but it hauls the mail pretty well.

Wide open.....normally every chance I get when conditions allow. That's why I buy, what I buy.

This is a recent photo my two daily driver getting ran against each other at the track. Both are well past 150K miles. I had the black car almost topped out passing a semi down a hill the other day, does that make me 16 again? Kind of felt like it did. Lol

I completely understand driving a life sucking SUV and not opening the throttle! Been there…

When I told my wife I was going to take our 2 daily drivers and run them against each other to see which one was faster, I initially got shot down, until I bought her something else to drive….her priceless reply at the time caught me a little off guard….

“so your going to take the two cars I drive everyday and race them all out against each other….and you don’t see a problem with that?”

nice magnum

At least once a week./
https://i.postimg.cc/dLvVzG93/1997-328-I-BMW.jpg

https://i.postimg.cc/2Ld815CC/1997-328-I-BMW-rear.jpg

All the time

You mean my 2017 Chevy Spark? Hell no, lol. What's the point? It's fun to drive, though, since it's a 5-speed manual.

Interesting topic, my Ford Ranger shop truck has 320k miles and has never seen full throttle. My Camry Wagon (dog hauler) had 270k and never saw full throttle and neither has the Equinox that replaced it. I have no interest in driving them hard because I'm the guy that'll need to fix it if they break.... Now my hobby cars are a completely opposite story. I don't mind working on those.

On a related note my brother (has a nine second 70 Firebird and an eleven second 02 Firebird) drives a concrete truck for a living. The truck developed an issue which kept breaking one of the differentials constantly. He was accused of "beating" on the truck and causing the problem because he races cars. (Obviously, full throttling a fully loaded concrete mixer is a lot of fun) Finally during the fourth or fifth repair the mechanic figured out the new ring and pinion was a different ratio than the one in the second differential.

I don't beat on my daily's either but I'll give them WOT when I need to. I drive on some windy 2 lane mountain roads that can have some pretty short passing zones. So when I do have an opportunity to pass a slower car, I go WOT because I want to get out of that lane as fast as possible. Both are decent V8s so they can get it done. Other than that, I baby them.

Well, my "daily driver" is my 69 400 (w/455) Firebird, so yes. Granted, I don't work, so I fill up the tank every month.

The family car is a 2010 Honda Odyssey and pretty mush drive it as a car. It will get up if it needs to.

There is nothing that makes me babying a high milage vehicle more than knowing it is terribly hard to work on and I am the one that gets too fix it!

Once every week or so. The 5.0 Coyote in my F150 sounds great and loves to rev.
And since I'm part of the team that engineers these, I know I'm not doing anything it wasn't designed to be able to take.

My daily is a 2007 Silverado Z71 5.3, I treat it politely because it's a tool and I'm not in a rush to sink cash into the transmission. Wife's car is a different story, '21 WRX STI. Boost is addictive, it's under warranty, and we both flog the hell out of it.

My daily driver is a truck. It is used as a truck. It often pulls a trailer.

Throttle is applied as necessary.

Jon

EXACTLY!!!

Well daily driver is a 24 year old Dodge Neon. So yes, WOT is necessary pretty much every day to keep up with traffic on the highway. 3-speed automatic, no overdrive. 3500 rpm's at 70 MPH. It doesn't care and uses no oil. Other daily driver was a 2002 Jeep Grand Cherokee 4.0L inline 6. Maximum sustained highway speed, 75 MPH. So it saw WOT daily as well. On the plus side, very hard to get a speeding ticket in either one of them!!

I was working at Francis Chrysler Plymouth when those came out.
Corporate can out with a Neon-Honda-Saturn-Toyota to let us mechanic's test drive and evaluate them.
In the meeting after words I was the only one that told them I liked the Honda best.
All the other Techs didn't want to own up to it,fearful of losing a job over it.
Although the Neon's were descent cars. ;)

My sister put an app on my phone that tracks speed, hard braking and rapid acceleration. It said I went 105 MPH, 2 speeding, 12 hard braking and 1 rapid acceleration. All this in a 95 Cherokee with a 4.0 6cylinder. ;) The speedo said I was doing 85! I'm not afraid of breaking it. ��

Hard to believe that any vehicle made from 1990 on up still had a 3 speed non overdrive transmission in it. Probably because Chrysler never made a decent automatic transmission that had an overdrive gear.

My daily driver is a 2002 Saturn Vue with 315K miles. It has a 5-spd manual behind the 143 HP Ecotec 4 and weighs in at 3400 lbs (without me),. When merging into traffic or pulling onto a busy highway, I'm usually at WOT with a shift point of around 3500 - 4000 RPM. I've always run full synthetic oil, which is changed at every 5K miles. It still runs great, although it leaks a little oil now. Oil consumption is one quart about every 1500 miles, about double of what it was when new. I'm still driving it everywhere I need to go, but since I work from home 90% of the time, I'm not running the miles like I did before Covid. I used to average about 20K miles per year. Post-Covid, it's only about 4K miles per year.

I installed a Class 4 hitch on it, although the 4-cylinder 5-spd manual combo is only rated to 1500 lb. I've towed a 6x10 with a couple of Pontiac engines on it, so I was right at the limit. It was pretty much WOT on any grade, with me dropping into a lower gear to pull a hill. I often drive through the Uwharrie Mountains (which aren't that high), and by the time I reached the top of a grade I was WOT in 3rd gear only doing about 45 MPH.

If I didn't scrub rubber off the tires of my Bolt EV at least 3 times a day then I wasn't driving it that day. It would fight for traction any time the pedal went to the floor under 35 mph. Current AWD EV6 gets pedal to the floor semi-frequently when merging, but its also 1.5 seconds quicker to 60 than the Bolt. I am considering upgrading to the GT version that has like a 3.5 second 0-60, and if I do, the pedal probably won't meet the floor as often.

My daily drivers are 710 HP and 1020 HP and yes they see plenty of WOT.

Now that I’m retired I’m driving my antique VW buses around town quite often.

WOT is a necessity with 36 (1200cc) and 57 (1600cc) horsepower, with the 1200 panel bus I use the throttle as an on-off switch most of the time. :D

Acceleration is not really a thing with these it’s more like gathering speed. Uphill it’s WOT in 3rd gear usually for both of them.

Lack of horsepower doesn’t mean they’re not capable, just don’t be in a big hurry to get where you’re going. ;)

No throttle body, no WOT. :p

It is still entertaining to watch the youngsters hammer on the their Toyotas and Hondas with that giant coffee can in the back. To be young again and have very few worries in life including mechanical