6th Gear

my GTI-6 (slowest car in it's class! ;)) runs over 3,000rpm when doing 70. if anything I wish 6th was a bit longer that it currently is but leave all the other gears as they are! I have nearly put my mums Micra into reverse a few times.

As for when you should be in sixth gear I just run through the gears changing up when i can. you should always aim to be in a higher gear if you can.
 
dave_beast said:
Well this was over 8 miles, and I was in full Werthers, pipe and slippers mode :cool:
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Meaningless over such a tiny distance. For example there is a stretch of road on the way out of Devon whereby if I reset and drive for 10 miles, I can be showing over 50mpg on my 306bhp twin turbo engined petrol car.

Am I really getting 50mpg? Perhaps on that small snippet but it'll never average anything like that, just like yours won't.

On the flat, at 70mph, my other car will do 45-48mpg according to the instant readout. Great! Same thing you think yours does. But then don't forget that your average journey even on the Motorway includes hills as well as flat sections, the net result being I never, ever, ever see a proper trip average of 45mpg - 39.7 being the best I've got.
 
In my car which has 6 gears, the 5th gear rarely gets used. As soon as I get to cruising speeds I make the shape of an inverted U and take it straight from 4th to 6th.
 
ganesh said:
I wish I had a 6th gear, am yet to even drive a car that has one.
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6th gear is the same ratio (or near enough) as every other 5th gear in a 5 speed box - normally referred to as an overdrive.

What a six speed box does is provide smaller jumps for each gear between 1st and 6th.

It's not like when 5 speed boxes replaced 4 speed boxes. 4 speed boxes typically had a 1:1 4th gear not an overdrive. 5 speed boxes introduced overdrive as a 5th gear and every other ratio was the same as the preceding 4 speed box.
 
In most cases he's right through. Sure, recently there's been a push towards six gears to make the top gear longer and the ratios for 1-5 are very similar but when it's a performance car (which are all that had six gears traditionally) it was done for performance reasons. My 306 is terrible, 70mph is over 3k rpm.
 
About 7 years ago BMW changed from a 5-speed 330i to a 6-speed 330i. The ratios were:

5-speed: 4.21, 2.49, 1.66, 1.24, 1.00
6-speed: 4.35, 2.50, 1.66, 1.23, 1.00, 0.85
 
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