[aviral2122]

Originally Posted by torquecurve

I feel this is pointless - each car with a different engine will ideally have a gearbox designed and developed for it. The same gear box could be used in different cars and made to behave entirely differently. In an engine with a wide torque band you will have short first, second gears, a versatile third, an almost equivalent fourth and fifth/sixth etc etc overdrive. The same gearbox in a different car with a short torque band will be made to work differently!

That is the enitre point. To know what are the preferences given each car and gear box are differently tuned.
What the purpose is again to find if despite all the differences (mechanics and electronics) there is some sort of preference amongst drivers.
If it were pointless i am sure poll and thread would reflect that.
Let's not break the sanctity of forums and let us actually contribute than to diminish the thread.

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by OSH

The overdrive gear is used to achieve the car's top speed,.

Not always. It depends a bit. Quite a few cars will reach top speed in a lower gear.
Topspeed for a car is where the drag balances out with the max amount of forward motion the engine/driveline can achieve. That is down to torque. Overdrive due to its low ratio, less than 1:1 as we discussed might not be suitable to reach top speed.

You can easily get a feel for what I mean by trying out this:

Get onto a motorway with little traffic. Get up to 100-130 km/h, start cruising at whatever highest gear you have. Floor the gas pedal and get a feel for how fast (or rather slowly) the cars accelerates. Now do the same with a lower gear. You will notice a very substantial difference.

Drag increases considerably with high speeds. A little bit of extra speed introduces a lot of extra drag and you need torgue to overcome. Again, it depends on your engine/gearbox, but you might only reach topspeed in a lower gear than whatever is highest on your particular car. If anything you will reach it a lot faster!


Jeroen

[pannags]

Voted for gear 3

The 3rd gear on my S-Cross DDiS200 is akin to driving an AT - from 20s all the way to the 90s (in kmph terms, of course)!

This pretty much sums up my argument that the S-Cross 1.3 MJD is actually a semi-automatic

[GTO]

Originally Posted by aviral2122

I am eager to learn what other think about it and for this I will add a poll to listen to others on what is their say of which gear gives them maximum pull (or pushback).

What a thread idea, sirji . And some equally amazing replies from BHPians.

In a diesel, my favourite is 3rd gear. You can go from really low speeds to past a 100 in most oil-burners with 3rd. Plus, with diesels, mid-range is the real fun and most seen in 3rd (along with 2nd). Lastly, you can use the 3rd gear of a diesel like an automatic in the city.

In a petrol, my favourite gear is 2nd. It's the only gear that can go from zero to past a 100 . Having owned 2 Hondas, I can tell you there's nothing quite like high-revving in 2nd gear (and 3rd) with a free-revving engine and a lovely exhaust note singing sweet music for your ears.

This is what I'm talking about. Of all the cars I've previously owned, this is the one I miss the most:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdsCul-rtmE

Related thread

[rajshenoy]

Originally Posted by GTO

In a diesel, my favourite is 3rd gear. You can go from really low speeds to past a 100 in most oil-burners with 3rd. Plus, with diesels, mid-range is the real fun and most seen in 3rd (along with 2nd). Lastly, you can use the 3rd gear of a diesel like an automatic in the city.

In a petrol, my favourite gear is 2nd. It's the only gear that can go from zero to past a 100 . Having owned 2 Hondas, I can tell you there's nothing quite like high-revving in 2nd gear (and 3rd) with a free-revving engine and a lovely exhaust note singing sweet music for your ears.

I totally agree with you on this. Especially for ambling around the city, I prefer 3rd gear for anywhere between 20-60kmpl to avoid gear shifts. This is for my Diesel Ertiga.

For Petrol cars, we need to be on 2nd or 3rd depending on the speed.

[vishy76]

Originally Posted by OSH

Both; 4th-5th gear or 5th-6th gear of the same car cannot be overdrive gears, AFAIK there can only be one overdrive gear and that is the last gear. So if the the car has 5 forward gears, the 5th gear is overdrive and if the car has 6 forward gears, 6th gear is overdrive.

The gear just before the overdrive gear will be the direct drive; 4th gear in case of cars having 5 forward gears and 5th gear in cars having 6 forward gears.

There can be some cars which may not be following the above pattern, but then I don't thing those cars will be everyday cars that are running in India. Experts please correct me if I'm wrong.

The official review says so for the manual GB:

Note that the top 3 ratios of the manual are overdrive.

[Rehaan]

Originally Posted by selfdrive

Should 'neutral' not be an option too? Especially as we go downhill.

I get that you're joking, but that would actually be a poor choice:
Does coasting in neutral (downhill) save fuel? - Team-BHP

Originally Posted by GTO

In a petrol, my favourite gear is 2nd. It's the only gear that can go from zero to past a 100

2nd gear in the VTEC was beautiful.

The only downside was that it topped out at 98 km/h (vbox, not speedo) -- which meant you had to shift to 3rd to get a 0-100 time.

That extra gearshift wasted some precious milliseconds, making the VTEC appear slower on paper than it actually was!

[AltoLXI]

Voted for 3

but on my new i20 petrol it sometimes drops down to 2nd

[Rehaan]

Originally Posted by aviral2122

...but all the cars I have driven had a substantial pull in 3rd gear.

Is there a specific technical reason behind this or is it just my perception?

The lower the gear, the faster the rate of acceleration.

The higher the gear, the larger the range of speed it is capable of.


The intersection of the two is typically somewhere in the middle of the gearbox! i.e. 3rd gear


The 3rd gear ratio is usually the sweet spot for feeling that large change in speed (the thrill of speed) + feeling a snappy enough change in speed (acceleration).

Of course there's exceptions - but this is usually the case.


Few more reasons: It's not jerky like 1st. It isn't pushing the engine hard and creating a lot of noise and topping out at unimpressive speeds like 2nd. And it's attainable - you can use it to its max potential in the city, unlike 4th, 5th et al.

I think that explains why 3rd has a 64% share of this poll, and a huge 48% lead over the closest contender.

[Shome]

Reverse...duh! The only way all the cars I've owned till date become rear wheel drive

[Nalin1]

My favorite gear on the Terrano is the 6th! It is the smoothest, most silent, the turbo is spinning, consuming least fuel and overtaking most !

[thoma]

Originally Posted by Rehaan

I think that explains why 3rd has a 64% share of this poll, and a huge 48% lead over the closest contender.

One question to all third gear lovers. No offence meant, just a different perspective of the thread question.

Imagine you get stuck in a gear while driving. Which gear would you prefer to get stuck in?

[swiftdiesel]

I have voted for 5 or more for the 6th gear which I love the most. I do appreciate the 3rd gear versatility and in my diesel i20 while the 4th is very forgiving too, in moderate traffic. I can easily pick up from 30 kmph in 4th without a hitch. I should add the low end and the wide spread of torque has made me a very sedate driver. I used to drive very aggressively to keep the engine on the boil with peak torque engines.

But 6th gear takes the biscuit as the car is relaxed, I'm relaxed and the pair of us are doing pleasurable speeds without breaking a sweat!

Also, would love to hear from all who voted for R. Why is it their favourite? In fact the Reverse gear makes a whine too due to the idler gear and it's least of my favourites. Gets the job done and that's about it.

[sun_king]

Voted for 3rd gear. Some while ago somebody had commented here that the 3rd gear in an ANHC is the poor man's CVT and that is quite true. If I am to be stuck in a gear, may that be the 3rd. When shifting up to 3rd in the correct speeds and RPM bands, the surge is truly exhilarating. That said, the 2nd gear is the true beast in the City. I remember my wife driving it on the highway for the first time and the car picked up speed smoothly through the gear shifts. After a while she asked if she should shift to third because the car seems to be going quite fast. Terrified, I glanced at the speedo and it was a little past 100. She was used to her Nano which has increased vibrations as the speeds approach the selected gears upper limits and that is her cue for an upshift. No such cues in the City and I got to see what it can do in the 2nd gear. Still 3rd is my favorite because of its versatility and the oomph when shifted well.

One other factor is the way I shift gears, I prefer to palm 1,2 and 5 with fist grip for 3rd and 4th. So when shifting from 2nd to 3rd it is the soft palm flick to the central/neutral followed by the firm grip pushing it to 3rd. The push is more comfortable than the palm!

[ksameer1234]

Wow! Never thought that so many would echo similar feelings when it comes to something as trivial as third gear of the gearbox! Almost all cars have third gear as the most usable one offering probably the best combination of low-end torque and top-speed.

In fact, on a five-speed gearbox, fourth gear feels nearly redundant since third gear is tall enough to rev slightly more and shift directly to fifth! Can I please vote the fourth gear to be the most useless gear??