Newbie Question About Cruising in 6th Gear

[m3incorp]

I drive the same. I've gone months without shifting into 6th gear if I don't drive it out of town. It is funny how I talk to some people and they never want to drive their cars over 3500 rpm.

Sounds like you were lugging the engine (not a Good thing to do). You need to downshift as you said, in order to get more rpm. I very seldom use 6th gear on the highway at all. Heck, sometimes I don’t even use 5th on the highway if the speed limit is 55-65 mph.

The more you drive your car, the more you’ll get a better feel for what each gear is capable of. Try this, the next time you’re on the highway, shift into 4th and stay there at highway speeds. This won’t hurt the car or transmission one bit. The only downside to it would be increased rpm, which in turn would burn more fuel.

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[AZ_Ryan]

 

[Pistol_91]

I have a pp1 with 3.73 gears. I use 6th gear daily. Going almost 70 on the highway is screaming at 2k rpms. If you have long gearing, then yeah, you probably won't use 6th gear around town. I use 6th gear when I reach around 55-60mph

 

[m3incorp]

Cool, I am not talking down on how anyone else drives. I bought the Mustang for fun (doesn't mean illegal) and I bought the Fusion for the daily non-fun drives. I said I find it funny someone buys a Mustang and never gets it over 3500 rpm.....this is different than having fun on a track or street. I rarely shift the lower three gears under 3500 rpm. But, that is just me.

 

[black22gt]

Hello members!

Back in March we purchase our first Mustang GT (its also a convertible, with MT). Its a 2021, and had less than 2k miles at time of purchase. We just got back from our first big road trip (2,500+ miles).

One thing I noticed in traffic or slower speeds: If I didn't downshift right away and just tried to slowly accelerate in 5th or 6th gear - the engine would lug slightly: and that's pretty normal. However, If I tipped the throttle more aggressively, the car would shake like it was misfiring. Obviously, I would downshift at that point; but is that behavior fairly normal? This is my first V8 with MT. All other times it seems to purr like a kitten or roar like a lion.

So I did some personal research (vroom vroom) on what you are talking about. I wanted to ask, how slow were you getting down to when this happened?

I was able to (somewhat) accelerate up a solid grade of a hill at any rpm with 4 digits in 5th, but 6th was just okay for maintaining down to 48 ish or so. Below that it kinda does a thing kinda like you describe, when i try to accelerate. Somewhat accellerate means i could overtake a prius before the hill ends, which is two sets of uphills like 1 and 3/4 of a mile long total, with one section that means business.

Another thing i wanted to point out. I think that sometimes it takes the computer a sec to get a good timing setting in these lugging rpms/gears. My active imagination thinks this happens more when on 87 vs 93. Its like its almost misfiring and the ecu takes a few tries to get it to whatever timings finally worked out enough to give you some torque, at which point it goes a bit. Seems to get it right faster on 93, though it's been a minute since I've had the pleasure of 93 so I'll have to confirm when i can get some to test on my test hill. Probably all in my head anyways, but there it is!

In other news, I did try the 4th gear on the highway thing. Very easy to navigate around the other cars that way, though it hurts my brain a bit not shifting into 6th... Sounds good in track mode exhaust!

 

[Nightmonkey]

@***** You should mention, that you might have the 3.55 diff, so 2nd gear would be enough for all driving in legal limits.
You should be able to drive your 2015-2017 comfortably in 6th gear at 80 km/h.

 

[Therealmattlex]

I think it's pretty normal in these cars. Mine does the same thing in 6th. If I want to do more than a gentle acceleration I will down shift.

 

[Nightmonkey]

@*****
Get that strut tower brace, it's a no brainer upgrade for chassis regidity.

 

[AZ_Ryan]

@***** You should mention, that you might have the 3.55 diff, so 2nd gear would be enough for all driving in legal limits.
You should be able to drive your 2015-2017 comfortably in 6th gear at 80 km/h.

You should try it with 3.73 gears.

 

[Oilspot6G]

Sounds like you were lugging the engine (not a Good thing to do). You need to downshift as you said, in order to get more rpm. I very seldom use 6th gear on the highway at all. Heck, sometimes I don’t even use 5th on the highway if the speed limit is 55-65 mph.

The more you drive your car, the more you’ll get a better feel for what each gear is capable of. Try this, the next time you’re on the highway, shift into 4th and stay there at highway speeds. This won’t hurt the car or transmission one bit. The only downside to it would be increased rpm, which in turn would burn more fuel.

Yes, that's what I figured but just wanted to confirm.

So I did some personal research (vroom vroom) on what you are talking about. I wanted to ask, how slow were you getting down to when this happened?

I was able to (somewhat) accelerate up a solid grade of a hill at any rpm with 4 digits in 5th, but 6th was just okay for maintaining down to 48 ish or so. Below that it kinda does a thing kinda like you describe, when i try to accelerate. Somewhat accellerate means i could overtake a prius before the hill ends, which is two sets of uphills like 1 and 3/4 of a mile long total, with one section that means business.

Another thing i wanted to point out. I think that sometimes it takes the computer a sec to get a good timing setting in these lugging rpms/gears. My active imagination thinks this happens more when on 87 vs 93. Its like its almost misfiring and the ecu takes a few tries to get it to whatever timings finally worked out enough to give you some torque, at which point it goes a bit. Seems to get it right faster on 93, though it's been a minute since I've had the pleasure of 93 so I'll have to confirm when i can get some to test on my test hill. Probably all in my head anyways, but there it is!

In other news, I did try the 4th gear on the highway thing. Very easy to navigate around the other cars that way, though it hurts my brain a bit not shifting into 6th... Sounds good in track mode exhaust!

Yes, that's a good summary. If it was gentle throttle I could easily maintain speed of say 50mph in 6th gear, if things went much lower than that and then traffic eased and everyone sped up quickly - I had to downshift.

I'm still learning this vehicle. This was our first road trip and first significant experience in a big traffic jam (i.e. Chicago, Atlanta, Indianapolis, etc.)

 

[m3incorp]

Understood, notice I added the parts about the first 3 gears.

 

[Prodigal]

The 5th to 4th downshift at 70-75 mph in my Tremac and LTH equipped car in sport plus mode brings the most glorious sound to my ears. It also scares the shit out of those in adjacent lanes but that’s a different story!
Downshift that biotch and let ‘er eat!!!

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