Quote:
Originally Posted by jm283611
thanks for all the replies, part of the thought behind the turbo with the taller gear ratios when I go up one of these west Virginia hills, the load will cause the turbo to spool and add just enough fuel and air to do the job at hand, rather than jumping down a gear, I wish I could find a smaller motor, I know the d series motors goes down to 1.3l but thats not in the US, actually they have a 1.3, 1.4, 1.5, 1.6, and 1.7, if I'm gonna go through the effort of a swap, I don't see dropping to a 1.5 making much of a difference, plus my motor only has 178k miles on it, gears are definitely in the plans, for spring, I'd like to swap in a cx trans, my tires I went to a narrower profile, it has 14" steel rims, I guess I should look for some moon disks, I'd like to know how much the aero mods improve, I'm not looking at aero civic territory, but maybe just a grill block, and an air dam
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Yea, you're already at 1.6L which is pretty small, 1.5 won't be worth the effort unless you need a new motor for some reason, and your gears aren't that bad. Your car profile says it's manual transmission, so I'd just work on driving technique and some light aeromodding, unless gear swapping is really easy and cheap. 2500rpm at 55...I'm jealous! I'm turning 3000, with a 1.8 too
For my car at least, 5th gear swap isn't very popular because the 11% rev reduction doesn't add up to fuel savings that quickly and it costs 230 in parts to do alone. Swapping to a 6 speed makes a little more sense because at least you have improved acceleration and more choice of gears for around town. Don't worry about the hills, if you need to go down a gear just be sure to keep the load relatively high. You might discover that you don't need more power at all to stay in top gear! Ideally we'd all have super tall gears and forced induction but that costs money, so we just have to accept the loss of power.
65mph is honestly pretty fast already and you're using A/C, I think your gas mileage is quite respectable. I always go 50 if I can get away with driving that slow.