Towing in 4th gear on a Honda Civic

[ai4kk]

What would be the problem with it being too slippery?

yeah, I don't do 5th with the trailer, the car is geared too high for that.

As far as the low-pressure area behind the vehicle, i was thinking of a boattail for the back of the trailer

[hackish]

Coles Notes: Tranny will grind and/or feel clicky.

Your synchros need friction to equalize the speed of the driven shaft and the layshaft so the teeth can engage the gear. If I was still rebuilding transmissions I'd snap some photos for you to show what happens to the teeth when they don't synchronize enough (sometimes through driver abuse too). I'm sure you can find this on howstuffworks.

-Michael

[ai4kk]

I'm familiar with synchros and such, just never figured the effects of the gear lube being too effective.

Heading out for my second long road trip tomorrow, tempted to try to rig something up to close off the gap. Maybe a tarp closed in the rear car doors and pulled tight to the trailer with elastic bungee cords?

[samwichse]

Pulling a trailer, I'd definitely want an IMAC&C for it.

Imac&c hch1 civic - Insight Central: Honda Insight Forum

Just putting some kayaks on top of my car made it way too assist-happy at highway speeds, but clicking off assist will help save your battery from ECU constantly wanting to cycle it. I imagine your hybrid battery ($$$) will have a significantly shortened life otherwise.

You can breadboard your own from scratch and use the free version ($10 in parts), or $50 gets you a PCB and the full software (this is what I've got), you have to add about $10 worth of parts to finish it, or Bumblebee Batteries sells completed units (don't know how much they cost).

Just a thought (from a happy IMAC&C owner).

Sam

[ai4kk]

Actually, cruising in 4th gear with the trailer usually results in a slight constant trickle charge resulting in a fully-charged battery most of the time. It is definitely very assist-happy in traffic, but I need the boost the most there as well.

[ai4kk]

Reading about the IMAC&C makes me wonder if there is any way to force recharging? I mean getting something like that and then disabling assist will help, but I have found a couple of situations where i wanted to recharge (like after a jumpstart) without having to drive it a long way with lots of coast-down time. The other time I can think of might be in the mountains, especially when towing or maybe even at the boatramp when I might want to be able to manually charge the battery for an upcoming pull.

[Miller88]

If the engine can pull 5th gear and you won't take a fuel economy hit from using 5th gear, you won't hurt anything using 5th gear. The "don't tow in overdrive" is for light duty automatics in small cars.

Originally Posted by ChazInMT

For tranny lube, only buy the factory stuff and don't believe anyone who says "Just use motor oil." They don't have to buy you're new tranny when the old one dies due to substituting. I researched this a lot for my own Civic and thats what I came to believe.

Depends on the vehicle. For my Focus, the specified fluid says it's a premium 75w-90 gear oil, but people have had it analized and it's much more related to a 10w-40 motor oil than a gear oil. The performance builders all use Mobil 1 TDT 5w-40 or Rotella T6 5w-40 in them with great results.

[samwichse]

Originally Posted by ai4kk

Reading about the IMAC&C makes me wonder if there is any way to force recharging? I mean getting something like that and then disabling assist will help, but I have found a couple of situations where i wanted to recharge (like after a jumpstart) without having to drive it a long way with lots of coast-down time. The other time I can think of might be in the mountains, especially when towing or maybe even at the boatramp when I might want to be able to manually charge the battery for an upcoming pull.

Yup, you just click however many notches of regen you want, and it'll charge the battery. I use it on my commute to force regen on the highway segment so when I hit the stop-and-go segment I have a full SOC to burn through.

Sam

[Miller88]

Originally Posted by ai4kk

What would be the problem with it being too slippery?

yeah, I don't do 5th with the trailer, the car is geared too high for that.

As far as the low-pressure area behind the vehicle, i was thinking of a boattail for the back of the trailer

The synthetic gear oil "washes" off of the differential easier and can leave parts of the differential (or manual trans) without lube; it falls off and goes back to the bottom much sooner than it should.

That's really only a problem if you tow HEAVY loads, though. My jeep is getting 75w-140 synthetic gear oil once I finally get the new front axle in (well it's getting it in both front and rear axles)

[ai4kk]

On not towing in 5th gear, the car can't maintain speed in 5th with the camper in tow. It keeps slowing down and down until the engine speed falls below 1,000 and then begins to lug and continue to slow. This car is really geared for economy with no load in 5th gear and even at 60 MPH I'm only turning 2,000 RPMs...which is just barely enough to maintain speed with no load. Practically any weight or aerodynamic load at all makes that untenable especially as the engine begins losing power at lower revs.

Will the IMAC&C allow you to charge at a standstill? If I'm halfway up a mountain pass towing my camper, can i pull over and click it into full regen while I sit and perhaps rev the engine just a little?

It just hit me that part of driving economically is also being able to get the power when you need it, otherwise you will have to get a bigger vehicle to do the job and defeat the whole purpose. This makes me wonder if there would be some way to switch the Civic into a sport mode on the engine to give more power for those times that you really do need it (climbing a mountain with a camper in tow or pulling your sailboat up the ramp) while preserving it's legendary fuel economy for the other 99% of the time?