Top Speed, 6th Gear & What were they thinking?

I DD my GT350R and can't even get it into 6th gear. How fast are you guys going when you put it in 6th. I don't see the point. I rarely get it out of 4th - because whats the point?

I do lots of highway driving, and I have mixed feelings on 6th.

Overall though, I think it is slightly too tall for a couple reasons:

1. There is a much more significant RPM drop between 5th and 6th than in any other gear. This makes rev matching when coming out of 6th inconvenient due to the need to have a different "blip" compared to all the other gears (which are similar to eachother).

2. The discontinuity between 5th and 6th means that 6th is much less useful for cruising around town. I'm typically going 40-45, which would be easily 6th gear for my other cars, but is right on the borderline in the GT350. A little shorter gearing would make 6th more useful in those situations.

3. On the highway you need to be going 70 for 6th to feel responsive (at least for me) and 80 for it to start to feel happy. I think just a little shorter would help all these scenarios, without a significant impact to fuel economy.

With all that said, the very tall 6th gear doesn't bother me too much.

-T

While 6th gear is too tall, it's a pretty modest sacrifice (to reach fleet fuel economy averages) to make in order to allow Ford to produce a normally-aspirated high revving FPC engine, when even guys like Ferrari are producing turbos. The US auto manufacturers are exploiting a significant advantage, for the betterment of automotive enthusiasm!

NipSC4328 said:

Mexico ... FTW :cheers:

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Houston Kid said:

Yes, in Mexico I got mine up to 151 mph in 5th but then saw a Federally and decided to slow her down. The car had plenty left.

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Haha I think it's safe to say pretty much anyone with a GT350 has spent at least a few moments in Mexico :cheers:

Just steer clear of those Mexican prisons. :eyebulge:

Trackaholic said:

2. The discontinuity between 5th and 6th means that 6th is much less useful for cruising around town. I'm typically going 40-45, which would be easily 6th gear for my other cars, but is right on the borderline in the GT350. A little shorter gearing would make 6th more useful in those situations.

3. On the highway you need to be going 70 for 6th to feel responsive (at least for me) and 80 for it to start to feel happy. I think just a little shorter would help all these scenarios, without a significant impact to fuel economy.

With all that said, the very tall 6th gear doesn't bother me too much.

-T

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I don't get into 6th under 70. I rarely get into 5th off highway - and in those instances it's by force of habit more so than on purpose. I have to constantly remind myself that cruising around at 4K might be inefficient fuel economy wise, but that's barely tipping into the power band.

btown93 said:

of course that might have meant more than $1300 in gas guzzler tax for all of us

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Another combined 1.5 MPG or so would not have required a gas guzzler tax:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Tax_Act#Gas_Guzzler_Tax

My 2009 GT500KR did not require a tax. So it can be done.

The GT350 is the only Ford vehicle with a guzzler tax. GM has 5 of them; Dodge 6:
https://nepis.epa.gov/Exe/ZyPDF.cgi/P100OA3I.PDF?Dockey=P100OA3I.PDF

Mike02z said:

I think most GT350 drivers will admit, there is no one home below 3500 RPM in the GT350. I thought 6th was fine for the highway. I just know whenever I needed to pass on a highway, I needed to drop into 5th or 4th. I didn't have any issue with that. Maybe I like passing faster than most, but when I floored the car in 6th, very little acceleration.

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I agree - at normal highway speed in 6th flooring it is futile. I also drop down to 5th to pass from time to time but really if I'm going to 5th on the highway I'm gunning for a hole 1/8mi or more away - and the holes I'm trying to hit 1/4 mi or more away I'm going to 4th and that's jumping from highway speeds to triple digits and back down. That kind of acceleration might be reserved for 6th only in a HC lol

oldmachguy said:

We must have just missed you. We left there on June 30th, after a fantastic week away from the Dallas heat. That would have been way cool to see a GT350 up there! Were you in town, or mountain village?

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Parked it at my buddy's house in Durango, and went to the Telluride music festival. Didn't see any other GT350's on the way there or back.

For me 6th only starts feeling good at around 90-100mph. In my opinion it is way too tall. If it had the same spacing as the other gears revs would only drop half as much as they actually do.

Here are the gear ratio's. The number after is the how much the revs drop, as a percentage. In general, I would think revs would drop more in lower gears as you up shift and then should drop less in higher gears, as the need to stay in the powerband becomes more critical. But then shifting into 6th rev's just drop through the floor.

For me, I would have liked to have seen no more than a 70% drop in revs, or maybe even 80%, so if feels similar to the 4-5 change. Even then it would still be an overdrive, but it would integrate into the driving experience better.

1st 3.253:1
68.6%
2nd 2.233:1
72.1%
3rd 1.611:1
77.2%
4th 1.243:1
80.5%
5th 1.00:1
62.9%
6th .629:1

MrCincinnati said:

I agree - at normal highway speed in 6th flooring it is futile. I also drop down to 5th to pass from time to time but really if I'm going to 5th on the highway I'm gunning for a hole 1/8mi or more away - and the holes I'm trying to hit 1/4 mi or more away I'm going to 4th and that's jumping from highway speeds to triple digits and back down. That kind of acceleration might be reserved for 6th only in a HC lol

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I could not agree more. Get it above 3500 and it's a ball to dart and run.

Oh that sound...As long as I live, I will never forget the sound of the GT350 minus resonators. An aural feast like no other American car.

I'm with the guys that hit 6th. It's way too tall...

It's like the whole gearbox was properly spaced in terms of gear ratios but on 6th a retard came and fucked everything up.

The revs drop so hard when changing from 5th to 6th that's mindlbowing. For example...at highway driving....if you want to pass someone in 5th, you do it and at 5-6K you change into 6th cuz you don't need to hoon it anymore but as soon as you want to do any real get go, you have to change to 5th again. The revs drop to likle 2-3K and that's useless....

I own a lowly GT auto but also have trouble finding torque to pass using 6th and the mileage does not improve to above 20 mpg or "smiles per gal" as I refer to it. These "paddles" to shift have given my 3.55:1 pony a chirp into 2nd gear almost stock! As an older driver, learning these paddles has been a treat!

Every 6 speed I've driven had evenly spaced ratios. It was intuitive to move from one gear to the next. It seems the Shelby is missing a gear between 5 and 6. It should have been a 7 speed a la Corvette. I find myself automatically shifting from 5 to 6 too soon. The RPMs make me feel like it's time to shift but no....

I have come to terms with it by thinking of the gearbox as a 5 speed with a cruising gear. A little irksome, but the car is so good otherwise I'll just deal with it.

On another note: People seems to focus on the notion of "overdrive." Overdrive stems from the 40's when they had an added box to implement overdrive. These days it's just part of the transmission. The only thing that matters is final drive ratio. It's the combination of transmission ratios and the differential ratio that counts. For example, 5th and 6th in my GTI 6-speed were less than 1:1 - two overdrive gears. The GT350, of course, only has one that's less than 1:1. The term overdrive is somewhat misused these days.

I don't get what the OP is complaining about, top gear has ALWAYS been an overdrive gear in a factory car!

I suppose Ford could have chosen one of the shorter 6th gear ratios available, though they might not be designed to take the increased torque.

Zombo said:

I suppose Ford could have chosen one of the shorter 6th gear ratios available, though they might not be designed to take the increased torque.

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So you are saying Ford had limited choices, and chose durability over a proper gear ratio?