This is an excerpt from the rotaryonline interview with Charlie Hughes :

"I took the Z out for a few laps, it was nose heavy, plunging down when going into corners. I then took the RX-8 out on the track, and within a ˝ lap, I felt as if I had owned it for five years. 9,000 rpm comes up very fast. When you shift, your down at 5500 or so, then back up at 9,000 again. There is no vibrations to tell you this, only the buzzing from the dash. From 3200 to 9000 rpm, the torque curve is virtually flat, and the engine just wants to spin like crazy."

Is it me or is that a large drop of 3500rpm? Is that normal for a rotary engine? On my prelude shifting at 7500rpm I usually only drop to about 5500rpm, maybe 5250 or about 2000-2250rpm. Just curious.

 

Wiiiiiiide power band=wider gearing. You Honda people(I'm not insulting, just stating a fact) have relatively narrow power bands and need the gearing to make up for it. I believe it will make the RX8 more of a pleasure to drive, as your not shifting ALL the time.

Michael

 

All you need to figure it out is the gear ratios. I think those are on another thread.

Also, it totally depends on what gears you're shifting between. From first to 2nd is always (?) a bigger drop than 2nd to third, is bigger than 3rd to 4th...
Without knowing what gear to what gear he's talking about, you can't really compare it to any other car.

 

Personally, I like the 500 RPM drop in my 3KGT when I shift to second... although my transmission doesn't Man do I wish I knew what speed shifting was doing to the transmission 6 months ago.

 

The ratios in the press release calculate to these speeds and rev drops.

1st 3.76 9000 67.1
2nd 2.27 9000 111.1 9000-5431 1st-2nd
3rd 1.54 9000 163.8 9000-6104 2nd-3rd
4th 1.19 9000 212.4 9000-6942 3rd-4th
5th 1.00 9000 252.1 9000-7582 4th-5th
6th 0.84 9000 299.1 9000-7587 5th-6th

So you can see that only 1st-2nd has the big drop, then as you go through the gears the drop narrows, as with almost all transmissions.

 

Is that accurate?
So if you shift at lower than 4500 RPM in 1st you run the risk of stalling?

 

Grimace,

Not quite. The number isn't fixed...think of it in percentage. So if the RPMs drop from 9000 to 5431 during the 1-2 shift, that is a 40% drop. So if you shift from 1st to 2nd at 4500 RPM, you end up at 2715.

 

No offence but are you serious?

 

LOL :D :D :D :D

 

Go easy on the rotary neewb.. :D I'm sure once he looked at the question for a bit he did one of these.. :D

 

The first time I read this, I was thinking "Holy crap...67 mph in first gear?" Then I realized it was scaled in kilometers per hour (I feel less dumb now). Here's the conversion for those of us that don't think in metric:

1st: 41.6 mph / 67.1 kph
2nd: 68.9 mph / 111.1 kph
3rd: 101.5 mph / 163.8 kph
4th: 131.7 mph / 212.4 kph
5th: 156.3 mph / 252.1 kph
6th: 185.4 mph / 299.1 kph

There's no way in hell this car will go 185 mph. It will hit the aero drag wall lower than that. I suspect that the top speed will be 156 mph in fifth gear, at best.

If I knew the coefficient of drag and frontal area, I could calculate top speed. Anyone know if this data was included in the press release? (I haven't had time to read it yet)

 

LOL, I was just yanking your chain guys.
Should have added a few " :D 's " to alleviate your worries. :D