[Christ]

One more thing, if you're only using a few gears in the transmission, you could do something we used to do to the old redneck racecars... remove the excess gearing.

Like in the race pintos, we'd use a T5 5MT against a 2300 engine, but we'd always remove 4th and 5th and reverse. This leaves you with a 3 speed... if you need to reverse, you shouldn't be racing, we said.

We found out that not only does this remove weight, it removes ROTATING weight... thus frictional losses. The only thing you'd have to do is also block access to that section of the gear-shift lever, which you could either do in the car, or in the transmission. But since you're only ever in town, and it doesn't seem that you're using more than 1-3 anyway, maybe you could benefit from this...

Plus, as an added benefit, if you install a reversible motor, or a way to make the one you have do it, you' could get rid of reverse, and have all your forward gears for reverse gears too! (You could also have a super-low forward gear, if that would fancy you more, for heavy snow driving, etc... if you get stuck.)

Reverse + Reversed engine == forward movement.

Anyway, those are my thoughts... I'll inform you if I have more.