Honda Car Forum

Its a 5 speed manual transmission with a DOHC V-TEC engine and it naturally is a very high revving engine; the redline goes all the way up into the 9,000's. I am about to go on a road trip to florida in may because i am moving there from phoenix and i noticed at highway speeds (70-85mph), in fifth gear, that the rpms are at a constant 4,000-5,000 rpms depending on how fast im cruising. this of course burns a lot of gas lol. is there anything i can do to fix this for gas money purposes without slowing down? i don't want to drive 2000 miles going 60 miles per hour lol. too bad my car doesnt have a sixth gear, that would solve wonders...is there any suggestions or am i just going to have to deal with my revv-happy screaming engine car? please note that i did in fact buy it for this reason that it is a fast car and i love the high revvs, but cruising on the freeway for long periods of time is a different story than when driving around the city for fun, any ideas would be great, im stumped

No. Unfortunately, most high-strung sports cars do NOT have a tall cruising gear, even though it would improve highway fuel economy. With 5 speed transmissions, this is kind of understandable. Close-ratio transmissions are seen as "sporty" and the more you have the closer together you can make them...so to use one of those gears for a tall cruising gear would take away from that.But honestly, in 6 speeds, it's pretty inexcusable. The Mazda Miata is a good example. The top and bottom gear ratios on the 6 speed are almost identical to the 5 speed. IMO, this makes the 6 speed pretty pointless. It isn't going to make more than a couple hundred RPM's difference at any point, and is highly unlikely to make you any faster...it just means you can row the gears more...or more likely, skip more gears.The Chevy Corvette, while it isn't a high-revving 4 cylinder, DOES have a tall highway gear, so CAN get surprisingly good fuel economy. It also has a shit-ton of torque, which makes it even easier for them to do it that way, but there is still a lot of wasted potential in all the Integras and Celicas and Miatas and RX-7s of the world.I've had someone bitch at me that it can't be done, that these cars can't handle such a gear, but the fact that you can drive them at lower speeds in high gears at ultra-low RPMs with no ill effects proves that wrong. There's a lot of overhead on those cars. Anyhow, no, there really isn't anything you can do unless you can find a compatible transmission that would do what you want it to do.You COULD change the gears in the differential, but that would completely change the character of the car. You'd get better fuel economy up high, but at the cost of performance down low. You'd be better off just buying a base Integra instead.

thats a gsr for ya. atleast its not a b16 trans hahaeven tho your at high rpm you really arent using that much gas since your just cruising. if you were deep into the gas then ya, your mileage would go down.there's nothing you can do unless you wanna swap some 18inch wheels on for a day lol or swap in the ls trans.. the car would be slow as hell but you'd get good mileage lolit redlines at 8000rpm by the way.

in my corvette c5 i can get up to 35 mpg on hwy