Just as the title says, having a bit of a debate in another thread about it so I decided to move it here. I think 45 MPH is just fine as long as your not accelerating. Your just cruising while getting better gas milage than if you were in 5th gear at the same speed. Doesn't bog or anything...

http://web.camaross.com/forums/showt...hreadid=272980 Thats the other thread....

 

I do not know if there is a minimum recommended speed when you should be in 6th.

Personally I wait till I'm going at least 65MPH, I hit 5th at about 50-55 and most of my city driving is in 3rd or lower.


I would think that the car would be a dog in 6th at 45mph, fine you may save a few bucks on fuel but I find that running the gears is 1/2 the fun of owning this car.

Then again I'm one of those guys whose first mod was !cags and a new shifter

 

It all depends on what gears you have. If you are stock like me, I wait till about 70mph to cruise in 6th. The best technique is to listen to the RPMs of the engine to hear if its bogging or not.

 

Say bye bye to your bearings. My car use to be daily driven by a woman before i bought the car when i pulled the motor all the bearings were in bad shape and even one of the mains were cracked and i believe it is because of the car being lugged. I have 3.90 gears and i never go to 6th unless its over 60mph. I try not to ever have the car cruising in a higher gear unless the motor is about 2000 rpms. With my 3.90's i'm running about 2k at 75mph and thats just about perfect for me.

 

A Z06 Vette (LS6) runs fine from 30 or so in 6th. A '00 SS Camaro pulls just fine from 1000 rpm, or maybe less, and no, you are not hurting the engine by "lugging" it, in spite of much opinion to the contrary. GM's biggest engine problem with the LS1 was the oil consumption problem due to ring flutter from guys cruising at part throttle about 4000 rpm in the lower gears. They found a condition GM didn't test for because it isn't a reasonable thing to do. However, GM fixed the ring flutter problem, and added that kind of driving to the durability schedule. Ask most powertrain engineers what they think of buzzing an engine like an LS1 at higher rpm with minimal throttle opening vs. cruising at 1200-1500 rpm.

Any stock LS1 (or LT1) is made to pull wide open throttle from very low rpm. They do it on the dyno all the time. If you are in 6th at 1000 or even less and you need to accelerate, push on the pedal. If the engine doesn't like it, it will tell you. If you are approaching full throttle, AND the car isn't accelerating fast enough for you, down shift a gear or two or three. In normal suburban traffic we encounter, rarely is a downshift necesary to keep up with traffic.

If you start off easily in first and get the 1-4 skip shift, look at the rpm in 4th.

For least engine wear and best fuel economy, run in the highest gear (6th being highest) the engine runs smoothly. If you experiment with this you'll find it's a lot lower speed than you expected.

I don't expect many folks to agree with me on this, but you asked.

My highly opinionated $.02

 

I don't go so much by MPH but RPM. I try to stay at 1200+ on the highway which equates to ~60-65MPH as my lowest MPH in 6th.

Through the city I try to stay around 1800-2000 for hills, traffic, etc. I figure the money I'd save in gas by running 1200-1500 through the city would go out the window for a new clutch because I'd have to do so much more shifting.

 

Thats exactly how I drive... any cruising OVER 45 i use 6th. However, I have 4.10s which probably makes a significant difference. 45 in 6th is about 1200-1300 rpms for me. You might wanna find out what kind of gears you got in that thing.

 

I think ideal crusing rpm is 1600-1800 rpm it is good on gas and doesnt lug the car, you cant got by mph because cars have diffrent ratios I got 3.23's and I put it in 6th around 77mph

 

I'm like Meccadeth, I used to cruise around town in 6th all the time. Naturally, there's not a lot of get up and go, but it will pull itself along and usually handle even some small hills. Of course, I had the king of low end torque, teh El Tee Won

 

My owners manual says 50