...a bit over geared??

All my car wants to do in first gear is wheelspin..then the bloody traction control cuts in and kills my acceleration. Argh. I like how they're made to be nippy and revvy but it can be a tad annoying. Or maybe my car just isn't good at getting the power down. Thinking of putting the schumacher 18 ozs on it so that might kill off a bit of the over geared feel plus they are wider so should have a bit more traction...hopefully.

or are **

You mean the ratios are too low?

70mph in my tipo is 3,000rpm. I've no doubt the car would pull along at 70 at 1600rpm. Number of times I've gone for 6th gear is unreal.

Hellcat said:

You mean the ratios are too low?

70mph in my tipo is 3,000rpm. I've no doubt the car would pull along at 70 at 1600rpm. Number of times I've gone for 6th gear is unreal.

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Exactly!! Ill be going along doing 70/80 and the thing will be revving way more than id like around the 3500 mark. itd pull that at 2500 easy like you say with yours. 1st seems to low the 2nd too bloody high and so on. Resulting in 5th being too low again its like every other gear is a cock up and has a knock on effect. 1st just spins the wheels and traction control cuts in then 2nd would be better lower...it only gets into its stride by the time i get into third

Could be worse....I've got a 1.5vvt that pulls 3k at 70 sounds nice in theory but means if you want to overtake in a national speed limit your in second gear to get the engine up into the powerband. The annoyance of a peaky engine (vvt generates decent power only really between 4-6.5k) and long gears means a back road becomes an exercise in constant gear changing this is fine if you are on a burn. If you just want to kick back however leaving it in a high gear on windy sections and up hill bits leaves it feeling sluggish and your better off changing from 5th to 3rd and lugging it up the hill that way (it'll do 87 in 3rd). Also means you have to change down to 4th to pull into the overtaking lane on a dual carriageway if its busy as it doesn't like to accelerate in 5th at motorway speed as its below the power band. Get decent economy when i'm not in 2nd bouncing off the limiter tho.

I always thought my 85 could have done with a 6th gear tho gears were short but it made it feel lively.

Hellcat said:

You mean the ratios are too low?

70mph in my tipo is 3,000rpm. I've no doubt the car would pull along at 70 at 1600rpm. Number of times I've gone for 6th gear is unreal.

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mine sits at 3,500rpm at 70! it could really do with a 6th gear for motorway journeys it has the low down grunt for it to work well too! interestingly though that means at 7,000rpm i'd be doing 140... i can't remember where the rev limiter kicks it's around 7000 though. where does yours kick in?

I'm at 3000rpm at 70 *with* a sixth gear, the amount of times I've gone to try and put it 'in to fifth' (seventh?) has been unreal.

maddogmorg said:

mine sits at 3,500rpm at 70! it could really do with a 6th gear for motorway journeys it has the low down grunt for it to work well too! interestingly though that means at 7,000rpm i'd be doing 140... i can't remember where the rev limiter kicks it's around 7000 though. where does yours kick in?

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3500... knew it was around there somewhere. Can't remember how high I got the revs on the track day. Got upto 6500 in 4th because changing to 5th only to change back down to 3rd for the hairpin would have been too much work.

The thing about having slim gears is the top gears are more in the play zone. At the track day until I got on a totally flying lap I wasn't using 5th. 4th and 3rd were good for the whole lap which is mad given some of the long 'straights' and tight hairpins.

Yazza54 said:

...a bit over geared??
All my car wants to do in first gear is wheelspin.

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In fifth my Uno 70 is geared for about 3250 rpm or so. In theory if it redlined in fifth it would hit 140mph! But not in practice obviously, though Uno Turbos can actually show more than 140mph with the right modifications
1980's Fiats seemed to be overgeared as the emphasis was on economy by having a tall fifth gear and high'ish final drives. The Unos in particular tended to have higher gears and the classic Pandas are probably similar.
Years ago I had a 2.0 Cortina and I did a 5 speed gearbox conversion on it. It would do 80mph at 3000rpm in fifth, giving a theoretical top speed of 160mph if it could redline in that gear. Sadly the brick like aerodynamics kind of halted going much over 110mph, though down a long motorway hill I did get to see 120mph on the clock. No doubt massively over-reading but it was fun to see the old girl showing that speed and upsetting all the 3 series BMW's!

Dunno about 70 but i think around 80 im sitting just under the 4000 mark i rarely keep the car below 4000 now days.

at 70 im turning 2000rpm... just into the smokey powerband

or drop down to 4th for a bit more smoke and accelration

Joshua Frost-Lunn said:

at 70 im turning 2000rpm... just into the smokey powerband

or drop down to 4th for a bit more smoke and accelration

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this doesnt apply to chip fat burners

I run at 3900 at 70 Partly due to my own fault though

Yazza54 said:

this doesnt apply to chip fat burners

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Bugar off and eat my TOTAL/JET fuel :devil:

Joshua Frost-Lunn said:

Bugar off and eat my TOTAL/JET fuel :devil:

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Yazza54 said:

...a bit over geared??

All my car wants to do in first gear is wheelspin..

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why do you say "over geared"? wheelspin is easier with shorter gearing

4k revs in the GP 1.2 is 80mph.

You cannot hear the engine at that speed though Its more refined on the motorway than anywhere else.

Rev limiter is at 7000rpm, giving a theoretical top speed of 140mph, 11mph more than the book speed. unless it doesn't have much enough power to go faster, but it should have enough wanna try it out sometime not stupid enough to try it on the motorway and don't know where else other than germany i could try it. hmmmmm....

as for the over geared, the tipo needs really 6 gears at 3500rpm with the big engine means fuel economy isn't as good as it should be. however the gears are just right for playing with, 1st to 30, 2nd to just over 50ish, 3rd to 80, 4th to 100 odd and 5th to 130/40!

maddogmorg said:

1st to 30, 2nd to just over 50ish, 3rd to 80, 4th to 100 odd and 5th to 130/40!

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my last few cars have been:

1st 30mph
2nd 60mph
3rd 90mph
4th 120mph
5th top speed

personally i think that is ok gearing for most situations but i would rather have slightly longer 1st 2nd and 3rd so i can hit 100mph in 3rd. slightly chaning the final ratio would be my preference.

im at 70 on 3000rpm, to be honest thats bad coz the 2.4 drinks enough without having high revs at motorway speeds, the 2.4 really really needed a 6th:bang:

1st 30
2nd 62
3rd roughly 90
4th about 120
5th had 150 on the speedo at the ring so thats about 145, its roughly 5mph out across the speedo:bang: