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Holy cow a 4 mile 7% grade. I guess I would approach it by as you said gain as much speed as possible and attempt to maintain 5th gear. But if you lose speed its time to admit defeat and downshift. We can't really win them all. 22mph in 5th gear is definately too low. I don't know what the speed limit in this section is but you can't just go over 10 mph below the speed limit and bottleneck traffic. Its not the right thing to do and you are not the only person on the road.
When your starting your car from a stop its just better to use the gears. First is for starting out. Second gear is good as long as your are still moving (rolling stop signs). I have been known to skip 3rd and 4th gears every now and then.
I feel I use more gas if I am trying to power up a hill in 5th gear with the accelerator floored and losing speed than to just shift to 4th and get over the hill quicker and not flooring it. I don't know for sure but I think I read that somewhere but don't remember where :P. Can someone prove me wrong please.
Cars maximum effeciency at 50-80% throttle? So if your flooring it to get up a hill would it make sense to downshift if your loosing too much speed?
I personally like to be going 10 mph over the limit at the top of the hill to give me a nice long coast. Doing so has netted me an improvement from 36mpg(constant 60mph speed) to 46mpg (pulse and glide (65mph - 55mph) on the hilly state road.
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