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hey, i was just wondering if anyone out there ***** at anything other than redline(for racing of course). i know from driving and from friends who have dinoed their cars that your power actually goes down when your really close to 6800, and that shifting at redline isnt always the best. has anyone put their car on a dino? ive found a few articles on the 99 si, but nothing for the 2k1.

 
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for power I usually shift at 6500rpm...

 
Rep Power: 369

well, thats true that power drops at a certain point before it reaches redline... thats the case for most car..

BUT, when u want speed, u bring each gear to redline inorder for the next gear to have more power to work with....

for example, if you're coming to redline at 7,000 rpm and you're in first gear... and you shift to 2nd gear... your rpm range will be in at (I'm guessing) 4,000 rpm.... which would be a better scenario than if you're in first, and you shift to 2nd gear at 6,000 rpm... and you're left with the 2nd gear at 3,000 rpm... which for our car, the power availiable to us at 3,000 rpm isn't too much compare to 4,000 rpm where its pretty close to our torque peak.

I hope you understand what I'm talking about... can't really explain good. heh.

 
Rep Power: 420

That concept is spot on CapYoda. Another way of saying it is that the power curve decreases less after the red line than before it. Therefore shifting right at or before the rev limiter kicks in gives you the best acceleration. 6,800rpm is where it's at. 6,100rpm is where the power starts to fall off.

There is technically one more issue to consider. It's how fast the wheels spin in relation to how fast the car travels. It's like... Bring it up to 6,800rpm as quickly as possible, but how long do you stay at 6,800rpm? If the wheels are still spinning faster than the car is traveling (I.E. You have wheel spin.), then shifting will give you less power when you could have used the power of the last gear to accelerate the car a little more. I don't think this is a large issue for us since our cars aren't ultra powerful, but I think this effect is real. Maybe someone who pushes his/her engine could feel this effect in 1st gear? Maybe with grippier tires this effect is less pronounced? Hmm... First time I've summed this up in words.