Wing

Sorry if this has been covered before. But does anyone who is more knowledgale than me know what the cruising RPMs would be at say 60mph in 6th gear?


I'm not sure if this is possible to calculate but I assume it would be using the gear ratio etc.

Reason I ask, is I would like my next car to cruise rather low on the highway at 60mph. My current car (2000 tiburon junk) is a little noisy at 3500-4000 rpm in 5th gear. I'd like to have something that cruises very quietly so I can have the feel of luxury on a long drive.

Don't get me wrong I like the high rev feel for performance driving but every once and awhile you just want to sit back and cruise in the peace and quiet.

zilch321

I'll take the other side of that RPM question. Had anyone read about noise levels for the car? What were the levels like in the older RX models?

Wing

Noise level /DB specs where posted the other day, it was moderatly low.

This helps.... but my tiburon has moderatly low DB as well, but the vibration is annoying at the higher RPM. I do know the rotary will help with that as well. So it may be more comfortable in that sense.

My parents have a pontiac transport mini van and it runs at about 1500 rpm at 120km/h about 65-70mph. It's soooo smooth I love it.

zilch321

A car that shakes at High RPM's on a smooth road could mean a lot of things. But what it comes down to is band construction. Could be motor mounts or any number of other things. Since no one here has likely driven an RX8, I dought they are going to be able to answer that question.

ZoomZoomH

iTrader: (1)

vibration at high rpm is a non-issue for a rotary engine, because it's internally balanced, and because it spins, it does not have the recipricating motion that all piston engines inherently suffer from and has to build external balance shafts to counter it

ah the beauty of a rotary engine :D

rtryboi

i believe i read somewhere that at around 60mph, the rpm will be between 3000-3500... which is high for piston engines (my car hits 80mph at 3000 rpm), but it still smoooooth for rotaries.

i wouldn't worry about engine noise and high rpm's with this car. i'm pretty sure that the rate at which engine dB increases per rpm is much lower that of piston engines.

i believe road noise from the tires will be more of an issue that the rotary.

zoom44

both dan and bern from rotarynews.com post here from time to time and they have driven it:D read their driving impressions on their site. i think both mention that being rotor nuts it was almost too quiet for them. i think though there will be some noise from the RE040's. and i posted a pic earlier today in th etech section (i think search and ye shall find) which shows 75mph on th espeedo at @3900rpms. i bet that was 6th

eccles

Sixth is geared for 20mph/1000rpm, near as dammit.

RotorGeek

Check this out.

zoom44

hey that's the pic i posted earlier today in this thread

Quick_lude

Ohhh... that looks soo nice! Just begging for a downshift!

Donny Boy

Ok, at 60 mph the rpm's of the RX-8 are at 3000. But bear in mind that this is NOT the rpm's of the rotors, but the rpm's pf the shaft. For each turn of the rotor, the shaft spins 3 times. So at 60 mph, the rotors are spinning at 1000 rpm's while the concentric shaft spins at 3000 rpm's.

Hope this helps.

Wing

3000@60mph REALLY only 1000 for each rotor sounds like it would be smooth indeed! Thanks!

RotorGeek

yeah Zoom44 thats your pic I took ahhhhhhhhh :D

rx8daniel

One of you ought to give the original source of that pic = Road and Track online...