It was a Corvette in top and I'm fairly sure he got faster than that, 180-190mph IIRC.
In the end of the day any car with a road clutch should be able to pull away in any gear although I seriously wouldn't expect your clutch to last long starting in top all the time
omg i cannot believe the things i've read here! how can people who don't even got the age to drive, boldly state so untrue things?! i quote almost everything said by scawen.
plus: i can start my car in 5th, but that doesnt mean the first 4 gears are unuseful, actually i would like to have a 6th gear in my car...
It's all in the car really. If I shift my Camaro at 6000 rpms in 1st, I'm going 53 mph. :P But, going 60 mph in 5th is barely turning 1800 rpms. My VW Scirocco on the other hand, redline in 1st gear (6600 rpms) is 32 mph, in 2nd, 52 mph. And at 60 in 5th, it's buzzing along at nearly 3400 rpms. With gearing that low, I can start the VW in 2nd all day long. I usually do, unless I'm going uphill or I'm trying to blow some chump away at a stoplight. I have even started it rolling in 3rd if I'm pointing downhill. My Camaro is nearly impossible to start in any gear other than first.
With the UF, since it's a 4-speed, I usually gear 1st for the slowest turn of the track, and park 4th gear at wherever the top speed is on that track. Have to make good use of the gears that are there. On the UFR, I'll even gear 1st REALLY low, again, so I can use 1st on the slow turns of the track. With most of the other cars that have six gears, I only use 1st for starts and pits. Now for auto-x, that's a different story, and I usually use "realistic" gearing for that since many times a low 1st gear is needed, especially on tight layouts.
I can't go below 25mph in my Daewoo Lanos whilst in 5th gear. Or is that the wrong end of the gear stick . . . Get it. Stick, gear stick. See what I did there.
I'd always thought the gearing of the ROAD cars in LFS was unrealistic. Take the XFG for example, how many real life similar cars would let you rev that high? The rev counter in my Focus stops at 7000rpm, which is when you'd only just be shifting up in the XFG. Not to mention the fact that it's puny 1.3l engine has 15bhp more than my 1.6 Zetec.
The XFG is not a racing car, LFS started as a simulator for racing ROAD cars on tracks.
I dont think the gearing is unrealistic, it lets your have a,longer gear them you will ever need, too much yes? unrealistic ? no! ( but i could be wrong, who am i after all )
I think you do need 1st gear to get going. On 94+ 6spd camaros and trans ams, there is a skip shift feature. If you are in 1st gear, <35% throttle, <21MPH, and engine coolant temperature greater than 171, then 2nd and 3rd gears are locked, and you can only shift to 4th,5th, or 6th. So, you really don't need a 2nd or 3rd gear.
Uhm...gearing? But yes, the engines in LFS rev quite high for road cars; on the other side, you have fully adjustable suspension settings, so it's likely that the engines are tuned. They don't have to last for 150 000km, so they can let them rev higher.
Yea.Tell me about it. Needed a new split handbrake cable and a seatbelt mount for it's last MOT. Cost me a fortune to get Chevvy parts.Have since found out that it uses a Vauxhall Astra chassis, engine and running gear. Which means all I need is to go downthe breakers and find an astra to bastardise.
Damn thing. It's such a shit car.
But it gets me from A to B. Slowly and with quite alot of body roll.
On a 3 mile runway, Jerermy started in 5th gear and got up to 160mph or so before running out of runway. Jeremy states that the car can go 175mph in 5th gear, but the Z06 Corvette reaches it's top speed of about 198mph in 5th gear at 6330 rpm. (6th gear is an overdrive / cruising gear). In the episode, the shots of the tach and speedo during this run aren't correct. First shot shows 2300 rpm at 42mph, which is 3rd gear. Next shot, tach indicates a bit over 6,000 rpm at 110mph, which again is 3rd gear. Last shot shows tach between 6500 rpm and 7000rpm (hard to tell from the angle) at 160mph, which is probably 4th. 7,000 rpm in the Z06 in 4th is about 162mph, so the speedo in the episode is optimistic, or it's just hard to see where the tach really is.
As already posted, 1st gear isn't setup for taking off from a standing start, but instead for accelerating out of the slowest turn on a track in the case of that UF1, which only has 4 gears.
In the case of high powered vehicles, 1st gear is fairly tall to prevent wheelspin or wheelies (motorcycles). A 2006 Z06 Corvette redlines at 7000 rpm, which is 61mph in 1st (91 in 2nd, 125 in 3rd, 162 in 4th, 6330rpm at 198mph in 5th). A Suzuki Hayabusa redlines at 11,000 rpm, 81mph in 1st (111 in 2nd, 138 in 3rd, 165 in 4th, 185 in 5th, top speed without speed limiter is about 192 in 6th). A Formula 1 race car might be geared to run between 90mph and 100mph in 1st.
This was done to get 1 more mile per gallon on the Camaro, Trans-Am, and Corvette. It's not really good for the engine, and you'd be lugging the engine if you're weren't going easy on the throttle trying to get good gas milage for an EPA test. Many owners of Camaros and Trans-Ams will buy a skip shift eliminator because it's so annoying.
In the case of the 2006 Z06, it's pretty obvious it's just an EPA thing as the range is so small, <=21% throttle, speed >=15mph, <=19mph. Since 1st gear on the Z06 can run up to 60mph, typical shifts into 2nd occur at speeds greater than 20mph, so the skip shift is only noticable in an alley where speed limit is 15mph.
I drive a 1991 Landcruiser wagon, 4.2 diesel manual. First gear is almost entirely redundant, with the maximum speed in first being about 15km/h(and it sounds like a thunderstorm while you're doing this). Being the big, heavy lump that the LC is, by the time you've got the clutch in and yanked the stick back into second, you're almost stopped again. First has nly a few uses, which include pulling mountains up mountains, very serious hillstarts with the boat attached and stealing garage doors :P. Heck, if you lift the cutch all by it's self, the car starts rolling, no throttle required. And then there's the low range transfer case... engage that, and well, who needs an accelerator?
In contrast, my mother's Mazda Premacy will do a healthy 50km/h in first with the little 2.0L petrol roaring with the best of them(well, exept the LC!).
I believe that the big, powerful V8 cars that are so prolific in my country might be able to match the UF1's remarkable feat, but I don't own a oil company, so I'm not about to find out!
Sorry to get off topic, but a reply to clarify my previous response:
It is a six speed manual. With manual transmissions, they generally don't distinguish gears as overdrive gears. I was just pointing out that top gear is reached in 5th gear, not 6th. This is also true of the more recent Camaros and Trans-Ams (top speed in 5th, not 6th). The manual transmissions in all of these cars (and the Viper) are variations of the Tremec (formerly Borg Warner) T-56. The strength of the the transmission (engine torque rating) and the gear ratios are the differences.
In the case of the 2006 C6 Z06 Corvette, the gears are:
Some might consider any gear ratio smaller than 1.00 to be an overdrive gear, which would make both 5th and 6th overdrive gears, but as I mentioned, generally the transmission is just called a 6 speed manual without regard to the gear ratios or which gear top speed is reached in.
The Z06 427 cubic inch - 7.0 liter engine makes it's peak power (505+hp) at 6300rpm, so 5th was set so that the car reaches it's top speed just a tad higher at 6330 rpms, at 198 mph. So the car can only reach the 7,000 rpm redline in the 1st 4 gears. 6th gear is a crusing gear, running at about 1500 rpm at 70mph - 112.6kmh, helps with gas milage, and reduced engine wear.
The term "overdrive" is more of a historical term, often used with automatic transmissions, again in reference to gear ratios less than 1.00. Some cars have a button to disable "overdrive", so a driver won't have to use as much throttle to cause the car to shift out of overdrive on a highway, like when passing a car or going up hill. Again, some manufacturers, just refer to their automatic transmissions as 4 speeds now, instead of 3 speed with overdrive. This is more of a legacy terminology. Most of the time, the automatics are just referred to as 4, 5, or 6 speeds.
The history behind all this was the fact that generally the rear end / final ratio on a car was set to work with a 1.00 gear ratio from the transmission for the top gear, and ratios below 1.00 were considered overdrive. In the case of manual transmissions, this meant that first gear ratio was well over 3.00, involving a large gear and a small gear, which reduced the number of gear teeth engaged at any one time, reducing the strength of the gear (it would have to be wider to be stronger). The newer trend, as with the T-56 tranny, is to use a higher ratio rear end, and a lower ratio 1st gear, < 3.00. A first gear 2.66 gear set is stronger than an 3.26 gear set (of the same width), and also produces less torque on the drive shaft. This reduces the amount of strength required for the rear end and allows a higher ratio, like the 3.42 in the case of the Corvette (also Camaros and Trans-Ams).
For example, the Z06's 5th gear of 0.74 and rear end ratio of 3.42 would be the equivalent of a 5th gear with 1.00 and rear end of 2.53, but with a rear end ratio of 2.53, first gear would have to increase from 2.66 to 3.60, making it weaker. So the bottom line is that the gearing of the T-56 type tranny and rear end combine for a stronger tranny / final drive setup without requiring extra weight.
I would have thought they'd of listed it as having an overdrive if top gear wasn't where the top speed was. It's a bit unclear I suppose because you wouldn't expect it to be listed as an overdrive if top was greater than 1.00 but still used as a cruising gear. Having said that are overdrive gears now housed in the main gearbox or are they still a seperate overdrive unit?
i quote almost everything said by scawen.
I have even started it rolling in 3rd if I'm pointing downhill. My Camaro is nearly impossible to start in any gear other than first.
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