I've been doing some thinking about my manual transmission. It came to my attention in another thread that you can swap gears and change your ratios if you want (just never really thought about it).
Didn't want to derail that thread too much, but it got me thinking. My understanding of it is, overdrive doesn't really do anything for you during heavy acceleration, like Erratic says. So, you get to 1 to 1 and you might as well leave it there, say if you're racing. All overdrive does for you is reduces RPM for highway cruising.
I knew cars like my Fusion's 6-speed had 2 overdrives for even better mileage advantages, but I was looking at LMR's manual tech page, and the Cobra's 6-speed is the same way. Why? What does that do for you, performance-wise? I thought for sure in the Cobra it would have given you another gear before 1 to 1, but not so, apparently. Why does having a 6-speed even give you bragging rights, if all it does is something lame like giving you better MPGs on the highway?
And for that matter, why bother with the additional step between 1 to 1 and the final ratio? It seems pointless to me. I can see in an automatic, you're going to want additional ratios for smoothness in shifting, but in a manual, does that even matter?
I'm not planning on swapping to a 6-speed, but since i have 4.10 gears, if I can make highway cruising more pleasant by changing my 5th gear ratio, I might just have to do that! Erratic, did changing that ratio for you make your car less smooth while accelerating? I guess that's the question.
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