I have a question

I have always driven cars to around 3000/3500rpm before changing gear

I see in some videos people going up to 6000 as in video of my model of car below

Am I driving it too carefully and should I be giving it some more revs to get the best out of the car/engine before changing

The video at about 4mins in

I like the sound of these three pot engines sounding gruff and thrummy especially this naturally asperated one

I guess also what do you guys do in the fiesta on gear changes

 

 

Interesting point you raise. I dont drive a fiesta but the thought of driving any car at 3000/3500 let alone 6000 revs fills me with dread. 

The Mk4 focus 1.5 diesel I do drive barely goes over 2000 revs but perhaps I'm driving it wrong. 

Yeah I go 3500 max before a change but only as this car seems to want to rev more (petrol), though other cars I have it's 3000

Seems in the video going up to 6000 definitely get the nice gruff of the 3 pot but I get that at 3000/3500

I've always not gone over those revs though I guess the revs are there for a reason

 

9 hours ago, Wino said:

Interesting point you raise. I dont drive a fiesta but the thought of driving any car at 3000/3500 let alone 6000 revs fills me with dread. 

The Mk4 focus 1.5 diesel I do drive barely goes over 2000 revs but perhaps I'm driving it wrong. 

Diesels always rev lower than petrols so hats why you barely go over 2000, I usually only change gear at 4000 or above when accelerating onto a motorway or a fast road (1.25L 4 cylinder petrol 80hp) otherwise I treat 2500 as a shift point or 3000 up steep hills

17 minutes ago, Neb_engineer said:

Diesels always rev lower than petrols so hats why you barely go over 2000, I usually only change gear at 4000 or above when accelerating onto a motorway or a fast road (1.25L 4 cylinder petrol 80hp) otherwise I treat 2500 as a shift point or 3000 up steep hills

In my A45 i pull the full 6500rpm  - drive it like its stolen. Problem is tyres only last 6k miles and you need a super tanker for refilling.😁

I normally go to about 3500 max mostly a bit lower I think - the higher revs obviously create much more noisy progress so changing in around the 3000 mark helps make the shifts more smoother. I have also changed below this (~2000 or so) but then it starts to feel as though I'm lugging the car around (maybe due to not having reached the ideal speed for that particular gear). 

NA engines are totally different to turbo engines.

All the power is at the top of the rev range in an NA engine.  If you're wanting to make good progress then there's absolutely no reason to change before at least 5k, you haven't even hit the power band if you're changing at 3k.  If you're just pootling around town then you can change up as early as you like to save on fuel and emissions - just as long as the engine doesn't labour in the higher gear.

With a turbo engine, and especially a turbo diesel, the torque is in the middle of the power band and you'll feel the pull from 2k or less, but it'll run out of puff around 4k, I rarely pass 3k in my 2.0 TDI as there's no need.

Here's a power graph for the 1.1 Ti-VCT.  (Image won't copy and paste for some reason). 

https://www.automobile-catalog.com/curve/2017/2562875/ford_fiesta_1_1_ti-vct_85.html

You can see from the graph you've only ever used about 55 of those 85 horses if you're changing up at 3500rpm!  Interestingly though, the torque starts dropping off at 3500rpm so you will feel less of a 'pull' after that point.  I guess that'll be due to the Ti-VCT moving the peak torque earlier in the revs than a conventional NA petrol.

 

My car, with the dual clutch auto box, under normal acceleration will always change up at 3000 rpm.

There's not really a right or wrong answer to this one. If you're happy with the performance you get changing up at 3,000-3,500 rpm that's fine and you should get decent economy. If you want to extract maximum performance to safely overtake etc, by all means use 6,000-6,500 rpm for short bursts - you won't hurt the car. You will hurt your fuel consumption if you make a habit of it though, as Simon suggests earlier in the thread!😀

Interesting on the power curve above

I must admit I love this NA version of the car getting 50mpg so all good and very pokey, the shift up arrows and gear recommendation is not useful shame can't turn those off

Just interesting how people use the revs differently, admit get that nice growl and thrum when you go above 3k I prefer the 3pot noise to my other 4 pot only exception was MG Zs I had great car great sound and loved it accross the revs

Not sure I have ever pushed revs as high as to red line but I guess there's no detriment doing so in short bursts and probably clears some muck ut

I only really need to go up to about 4K in the EcoBoost to get decent performance, as Tom says there’s not much above that. My old 1.6 NA Focus I also used to change around 3.5k around town, but maximum shove used to be around 4k and above, which I needed for motorways and faster roads.

more economical the lower the revs. less wear too.