insaneintenti0n

I seriously looooove my xB. So much more so than the tC I had for a year before i gave it to my wife. But for the life of me this gear ratio is gonna kill me. I just gotta get use to it, and hopefully i will...

Back story...
Had a 5-speed '94 Corolla for... ever. 7 years. Only car I really drove other than a 5-speed Paseo once a month for 2 years, and my other two cars ended up being autos. The gear ratio spoiled me on the corolla, but also cursed me cause it's been a while since i've seen much that has matched it. It just worked well for my driving.
1st gear - 35mph
2nd - 65mph
3rd - 85mph
4th - not sure the max, probably the 110 the speedo topped at
and then still had 5th.


So far, i've seriously redlined 1st - 3rd on the xB already. 1st at 25, 2nd at 45, and 3rd, like 70/75.

How am I supposed to merge onto a 65mph rd and have to shift so many times?!

eh, i'm not really ranting, just, i dunno, i think part of it is the car isn't as noisy as my corolla. it would whine when i was approaching 6k rpms, so i knew to shift... the xB hits max hp around the point, so it just flies into the redline.

godforbid i supercharge this. i'd have to shift 1st,2nd,3rd within like 2 seconds, haha. maybe i shoulda gotten the auto, no worries there.

[/whatever this was... ::loaded on caffeine::]

superboxcarxb

wow. those gears on your corolla are supercharged with nitro or something. lol. I thought the xb2 gears were "normal". lol.

Seanskee

i feel you on this one, i haven't had too much experience with much cars w/ stick as well. but i've been wondering about this for some time now. also, when exactly is the engine "broken in"?

insaneintenti0n

people say anything from "Cars don't need to be broken in" to somewhere between 500 & 5000 miles. I just kind of picked 1000.

Bigfieroman

Official Scion spec is 1000 miles. They say no heavy throttle, no driving where the engine stays at the same rpm for long periods, and avoid high rpm...I kept mine under 4000.

Seanskee

thanx for the info guys, but when are you guys shifting? I find myself usually shifting at around 3000 rpm. Recently, however, I've been trying out 2500 rpm and I've found this shift point to be smoother as well as less straining to the engine...if that makes sense.

superboxcarxb

from 3000 to 3500. And i would say broken in would be about 10,000 miles "just to be safe".

insaneintenti0n

2500 is very low to shift at, because the next gear is gonna be probably under 1000rpm, and they tell you not to do that either (be in a high gear w/ low RPMs)

anyway, i shift around 4-5k. though when i gotta merge, it's more like 5-6k, assuming i can keep my eye on the tach and not shoot into redline.

draxcaliber

the gear ratios are about the same as the tc right?

2nd gear is good until 54 mph, 3rd gear is good until 77 mph. those are your merging gears. 4th gear is good until 104 mph.

hope that helps some.