heretic

It takes, what, a quarter second to shift?



You have a good point, but for production, wide ratio (1st lower than 2.5:1) gearboxes, we are on the side of the curve where the gears are too far apart, unless you have some great turbo technology permitting a very wide/bottom-heavy powerband. And, at that point, you'd still be better off retuning to make it top-heavy and get more/closer ratios, assuming for example that you're not forced to draw through a 32mm restrictor causing your 2-liter turbo engine to run out of steam at about 5000-5500rpm.

j9fd3s

ive been driving around the rx8, its got nice gear spacing.....

TYSON

With the amount of money you would spend doubling your gear ratios (and adding weight to your car) you could build that better turbo system, and have a car that you would enjoy driving.



When Yamaha first brought out the R6, it had a 15,500 RPM redline, with the power peak at only 12,500 RPM. I believe that is so you weren't force to shift gears in the middle of a corner.



Too many gears would make it difficult to A) find that right gear for each corner and B) finish that corner without hitting the rev limiter. You can't shift when you are turning, so driving in and out of a corner would be badly affecting by having too many gears.

j9fd3s

thats whats nice about the rotary too, it doesnt mind too much being revved a little high

heretic

One of the loonies I work with drove his first RX-7, an early carbureted model. He was surprised at how the engine didn't have any definite peaks or slumps in the power delivery, just a smooth puuush from idle on up to the end of the tach.



I told him that if the car wasn't stone stock with the restrictive pellet-bed converter and the all too common siezed fan clutch, it would feel the same but a lot more puuuush but the lack of fan noise would be more than made up for with exhaust noise.



Most of the engines we build or tune are of the kind where there's nothing, nothing, nothing, and then some little elf in the camshaft pulls the lanyard and, as JPIII once said, the irresistable force slips off of the immovable object and pushes on you instead. These are the reason why GM used to install four-speeds with only a 55% speed difference between low and high.