I always assumed that you run the car till you feel no more pull and its out of its powerband,but this doesnt seem safr to do to a motor. I havent been able to find a stretch of road i can do that.How do i set up a tach for redline?

 

The idea behind a "true" redline, is that you never want to get that high. Assuming you have a stock motor, I'd set it the same as your factory redline (5k).

As far as the top of your powerband, the best (the correct) way to set that up on your tach is with a dyno pull. Can cost between $40 and $60 depending on where you go, but can tell you an awful lot about your motor and driveline's performance, and if it's stock, gives you a great baseline for when you do mods.

 

A redline is not a shift point. The idea is to set the red line at the absolute maximum rpm the engine is capable of without causing problems, and then set the orange line 500 rpm below that. I've found that if I train myself to start shifting at the orange, I can usually avoid smacking my rev limiter.

Anyhow, the two things that determine your real redline are the valvetrain and the bottom end. Find the limits of both, take the lower number, and that's your redline. You might have to go through a number of motors though, because that kind of testing tends to be destructive.

I have the rev limiter on my ZZ4 set at 6k (maximum recommended speed is 5800).