How Much Power is Lost After 433k Miles?

One of the first things that someone looks at when buying a used vehicle is the mileage. After lots of miles, things wear out and can leave a vehicle owner stranded or driving in discomfort. All of this wear and tear adds up after a while. What does this mean when it comes to power production, though? Will a car make less horsepower after being put through the wringer for a long span of time? It would be natural to think that worn out components would mean that a lot less power would end up being produced.

This time, thanks to a Car Throttle feature, we get to check out just that. In this experiment, we check out a high mileage Hero Skoda Octavia. If you’ve never heard of it, that’s ok. Most people probably haven’t.

The task at hand is to get this bad boy to the dyno to see how much potency it’s lost over the years. After being modified 9 years and 200,000 miles ago, it’ll be interesting to see if there has been any drop in numbers. The moment of truth ends up coming to a head when the car finally hits the dyno rollers. After a variety of pulls, the machine ends up creating good and consistent power each and every time. Is it less than before, though?

When it ends up rolling off of the dyno, on average, the car makes 106 horsepower and 180 lb-ft of torque. this means that almost a decade later, it’s lost just 3 horsepower and 10 lb-ft of torque. Another thing to be considered in a test like this is that every dyno is going to read a bit differently. That could fluctuate the numbers in either direction a bit. Therefore, with the margin of error considered, we think that the old school machine did quite well. It’s really a testament to the quality of this build! This evidence can also be tossed in the pile behind the idea that engine wear might not drain much power.