Quote:
Originally Posted by awcook
A couple people around here use the composite plastic, which isn't as flexible as regular plastic so it doesn't flop around on the highway but is flexible enough to get out of driveways. Side skirts are a little difficult with lawn edging because it always wants to curl up while you want your skirts to be straight.
The thing about auto transmissions with TC is that you need to be up to speed before it will allow it to lock up. In the automatic, 5th gear is cruising gear, not an accelerating gear, so of course it will downshift when you lay down the gas, but once you are up to the desired speed and the TC locks up, you will get pretty amazing gas mileage. So if you want to get the TC to work with you, you need to have a lighter load once you are up to speed, or else it won't work.
Remember, 80% load for accelerating, <20% for cruising. In my Civic, 80% would be about 3k RPMs while accelerating or 3.0 Gph. Anything past that would be out of the max torque powerband and slower than that would be too slow to get up to speed before the next light. Your car will be a little bit different since it is a little older and a completely different brand, try to look up the BSFC chart for your car to see where and how to accelerate.
Hope this helps!  |
Thanks for the tip! I've been able to figure out how to coax the TC into lockup on certain roads I frequently take. Also have a gnarly hill on I-5 I take on my way home and have been able to keep it locked up in high gear by driving with load... tricky to do without proper instrumentation! Last night I built up a little speed before the hill and gently feathered the throttle to keep it from downshifting. I ended up bleeding off about 10mph when I reached the top and was able to coast all the way down to my exit where there's a very unfortunately placed stop sign to kill all the momentum I had
