Quote:
Originally Posted by H-Man
I'd really dig my car with an 8 speed manual. Give me a triple overdrive, a stump puller 1st, a 2nd that looks like a first, then have third through fifth be the business gears. With the way my route is, I could use 2 extra overdrive gears (I have some spots where I'd be able to do 75 at 1800 RPM without lugging the engine and then some spots where I'm cursing the gap between 1st, 2nd, and third-- I'm effectively spending a quarter of the time accelerating and another quarter coasting with the hilly route I have).
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Haha you're crazy, I don't think I'd be able to get used to 8 gears in a H pattern.
I advocate 7 gears because usually 1st gear is a little short to be useful outside of getting off the line, and 2nd is usually a little tall and sluggish unless you have monstrous power.
On cars with big engines they just gear 1st fairly tall, but this means your clutch gets roasted really fast in stop and go. A lot of "supercars" with dry clutches have very short clutch life, and I suspect it's because they're geared so tall.
7 gears means you can have 2-6 be the 1-5 in a close ratio road racing style gearbox with 2 and 3 as the versatile acceleration gears, 1st gear be a stump puller for heavy traffic/clutch preservation, and 7 as the extra tall cruising gear for fuel economy. Kind of like how a lot of the dual clutch gearboxes are set up.