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the one thing I noticed with my old outback (98 outback ltd (wagon), 5 spd MTX, no AC) was the power of the engine could easily handle longer gears.
my 70mph rpm was horrible (3300 !!) but I managed to hover around 27-28mpg hwy driving.
city driving I netted around 23-25mpg with minor conservative driving. (still would take it up to almost 3k in 1st gear, but down to 2k for the rest)
I honestly hated the car after a few months, not only was I very disappointed with its mpg, it has got to be the worst car for cleaning and aero. so many little nooks/crannies that I considered pointless. purely aesthetics.
anyways, if I had decided to keep the car I was going to look into a much longer final drive and was going to try and bring my hwy rpm down to somewhere in the neighborhood of 2500 or even less.
I did look around but couldnt find anything except for racing final drive gears which were much shorter than the stock.
Im not sure what your FD is, I think I read its different than the MTX are @ 4.11(?)
but if you could get an FD to extend your gearing, Im betting you could easily see the 35mph mark, then add to that some aero mods you might even see close to 40mpg.
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