Engine RPMs

Congratulations, Steve, and welcome to the Madness!

 

I find it's always a center of attention whenever I go for gas and it always takes longer to get out of there than you'd expect. 

 

Your questions:

 

"What rpm do most of you rev to in 1st ,2nd, and 3rd gear before an upshift?"

 

It might depend on how much performance your engine has, but I usually shift between 3,000 and 4,000 around town.  If your exhaust is loud you can, of course, keep it a bit lower to maintain peace with the neighbors.  If you're surprising a Mustang, then 5,500 and up is fair game.

 

"What is the lowest rpm do you maintain while driving?"

 

Again, it depends on your engine, what it's cam spec is like, carburetion, a bunch of stuff.  I tend to rev a bit higher around town than some, and with my old transaxle (4:12 R&P) never went below 2,500.  However!  Now have a 3:88 R&P which makes it a bit quicker around town in each gear so I've lowered my "lug line" to around 2,000 and go light on the foot down there.  My cam will handle it fine....I just don't like making it work that much.

 

Gordon

The Speedstah Guy from Massachusetts 

For a stock 1600 VW engine, with stock size pulleys, cruise RPM is anywhere from 3000 to 4000 RPM (60-80mph in 4th). That will keep the fan spinning fast enough to keep the engine cool. I agree with Gordon, that you don't really want to be lugging it below 2000, if you are, downshift to get the revs back up. Shift points would be below 4400 RPM. You can take a stock engine to about 5500 briefly, but the stock engine runs out of huff at 4500 anyway, so there's no real point.

 

Stock recommended speed ranges in each gear:

1st: 0-15mph

2nd: 6-35mph

3rd: 18-55mph

4th: 30+mph

 

but I find 15, 30, and 45 the typical shift points while driving if I wasn't in a hurry.

 

Best stock acceleration:

1>2: 20mph

2>3: 38mph

3>4: 60mph

 

As said, this goes out the window if your engine can handle higher than stock revs, but cruising RPMs would still be about the same.

Well, there was that moment on I-95 when I was driving home today and, even though the Mass. State Troopers were as thick as fleas out there, I blasted up to 4,250 at over 80 mph to get around a couple of dump trucks that looked threatening.  One of the other guys in the club with an original "A" Cabriolet had a stone or something fall off of a bridge being worked on and dinged his hood (ouch...) on the way up so I wasn't taking any chances.  REALLY surprised a Bimmer driver who was following (a bit too closely) behind me when I took off........

 

Driving as such described above, what type of gas mileage should I expect on Highway vs City driving??? Reving 3K-4K, cruising between 3K-4K, and avoiding lugging below 2500 rpm? So my question is:

1). Has any one actually clocked their mpg?

2). Is the gas gauge fairly accurate?

 

I ask because I filled up the other day and it took just over 4 gallons, and my gauge was just a little below full. Still learning about this little beast.

 

 OK...here's a question for you old-timers. Have you ever clocked your car with a GPS (or something accurate).

 

I am trying to determine what the actual not theoretical speeds are at say 3000 and 4000 rpm with a 3:88 rear vs a 4:12 rear in 1st and 2nd gear...with 15" wheels and 65 or 70 series tires?

 

  ReV

Well, I'm not an old timer, but I used a speed app on my iPhone (which uses GPS) to measure my speed. I found out that the speedo was running about 5 mph too fast (which also meant the odometer was accumulating miles too fast).

Carey worked with North Hollywood to recalibrate it.

The new speedos that Carey & Henry sell run off of GPS rather than a cable.

> On May 21, 2015, at 1:09 PM, SpeedsterOwners.com <alerts@hoop.la> wrote:
>

I've used a GPS to check my speedo too.  I also found that mine was off by 6 or 7 mph at 60 mph. 

I also suspected that my tach was off, so I hooked my laptop up to the fuel injection ECU and went for a drive.  Sure enough, my tach was off by 400 rpm at 60 mph.

I sent both off to North Hollywood for recalibration.

I have checked mine with a GPS and it was off at some speeds and on at others.  I don't even look at it now.  I shift based on the sound of the engine. In town I never get out of third and I make sure I'm not the fastest car on the freeway. Some day I will upgrade to Carey's new set of gauges with the GPS Speedo.

 

 

Who is Carey, and what builder is he associated with?  Thanks!

Carey Hines

Beck Special Edition

 

http://www.beckspeedster.com/homepage.html

 

http://www.beckspeedster.com/b.../vdoinstruments.html

Carey Hines, Special Edition (Beck)

> On May 21, 2015, at 3:15 PM, SpeedsterOwners.com <alerts@hoop.la> wrote:
>

Don't ya just drive them by the seat of your pants?    Having said that I rode with and had a number of the fellows drive my car at Carlisle and apparently pants seats do differ.  I had guys short shift my car and that just doesn't work even the subie engines need RPMs.  I also had a couple fellows wring the snot out of it.   I just always felt I could feel what is "right" for my cars.  My Dad, God rest his soul, had his only new car a 1960 Corvair and he thought he was saving gas shifting into second at 5 or 10 miles per and into 3rd at 25.   You know what happened.  I don't red line cars often but I run'em pretty good after letting the oil and tires get up to temperature.    Honestly after years of driving don't you guys agree you can feel what's right for any individual car?  It  does differ car to car.   I tend to drive at a little higher RPM then average but tell me I am wrong if you think so.    I've got a little Spark chevy car (which by the way for the money is hard to beat) and it has a shift up indicator which I ignore.    I run it well above what they are suggesting for best economy.  Shoot the thing gets 35 miles per like I need to worry to get two or three more.    I have a buddy that says drive it like you stole it.   He does. I don't push it that hard but I think you should error high then low on the RPMs on any car and especially the air cooled ones since RPM's means fan speed and there for cooling.          

My 1st replica was a Vintage Speedster that I owned for 15 years, drove it pretty much on a daily basis (SoCal), logged 100,000 relatively trouble-free miles all over the Western states (CA, NV, WA, OR, AZ, UT, CO).

 

 

After an accident, replaced that car with another Vintage Speedster. Daily driver used as previous. In 8 months ownership, have logged 10,000 trouble-free miles.

 

 

I've enjoyed every mile driving these cars (even with their imperfections) without angst over which brand of oil to use, inaccuracy of tachometer, speed or travel of shifter pattern, etc.

 

Don't sweat the small stuff and drive & enjoy the car as if each time may be your last time to do so (there is no promise of tomorrow)!

 

I'm just saying...

 

 

 

Steve wrote: 

 

 

1). "Has any one actually clocked their mpg?"

 

Sure - most of us have and we get anywhere from 20 mpg to over 30 mpg.  Depends on how big the engine is and how hard you drive it.

2). "Is the gas gauge fairly accurate?"

 

Far from it.  It CAN be accurate if you take the time to adjust it properly, but even then it's going to float around so at best it will be 'sort-of' accurate.  The most important accuracy is the last 1.5 gallons.......

 

"I ask because I filled up the other day and it took just over 4 gallons, and my gauge was just a little below full. Still learning about this little beast."

 

When I fill mine it pins the needle on the top for a gallon or so and then starts to move down.  When it gets to floating around "R" on the bottom and I fill it, I can squeeze in 7.1 gallons.

 

In another thread I think you asked if anyone checked their Speedo speed with a GPS.  Mine is both low and high a few mph at different speeds (and the speedo reads in kilometers) but, surprisingly, at 60mph it's dead on.  

Thank you Gordon.

Thanks to all who replied, I was going to ask the same question.  I could not believe that I should be at 3000RPM at 60MPH.  Guess it's correct.

The rule of thumb for VW beetles for the last 3,000 years has been take your tach reading (say, 3000 rpm) and double the first two numbers to get your road speed.

 

So, 30 X 2 = 60 mph.

 

Remember, you're driving an air-cooled engine.  It needs lots of air to keep it cool and to get all that air flowing you have to keep the revs higher than with a water pumper.

 

My car is doing 65 at 3,000 rpm - that's perfectly fine with me.

 

My wife's watercooled Subaru Boxer engine is cranking wildly  at about 1,200 rpm at the same speed.

Suba-h-ru...I hope it's heavily muffled...a story from Finland a few years back.

 

Seems there was a Sport with an ex-factory Rallye Subaru who was terrorizing the neighborhood. The ugly exhaust note was so bad that cows stopped milking and small children were hiding under their beds

 

What to do...? An enterprising local lured the Subaru owner out on a lake for an "ice-race"...but the ice was thin and through it went !

 

A mighty cry of relief went up in the community and life was back to normal

 

 ReV

Ah Ha! The  ol' Ice-Race-on-the-lake trick works every time! 

Whether the engine is a stock 1600 (4,000 or so rpm peak) or a > than 2 liter monster that goes to ??? with power, it doesn't make any sense to rev it much past it's peak, ever. Revving an engine past what the combo was built for just wears stuff out faster, and if done continually will eventually break parts.

 

For normal toodling around, what Justin and Gordon pretty well covers it. I wrote this in another recent thread, but I think it bears repeating- using what VW recommended as a shift point (3500rpm) for the type 1 trans, the shift into 2nd drops down to 1900, the shift from 2nd drops to 2200 or 2250 (depending on whether it's an early or late gear) in 3rd and into 4th the rpms drop to 2400. You can run below these rpm's a little (in the appropriate gear) if you're cruising along on very light pedal pressure so the carbs are running on the idle circuits (the engine isn't making much waste heat in this mode). This is easiest to do with a bigger, more powerful engine (which will make more bottom end/lower midrange power), but keep an eye on the oil temp and cht gauges, because any hill that requires more gas to maintain speed will force the main jet circuits to take over, this will create heat (which you will see in the gauges) and it will be time to downshift.

 

I'm not saying that you should never be out and having fun (or as John's friend says, "driving it like you stole it!") because that's a big part of what these cars are about. You just need to know what you can (and can't) get away with. Al

 

PS- Steven- Great looking car!

Thank you !