I feel the s 2000 transmission is near perfect for the car. It's pretty obvious when the s does not like your input.

It is a little race car we can drive on the street be happy with that. The engineers at honda squeezed everything they could out of this car and still gets good mpg and 200k+ miles on car if taken care of. Not to mention the cost to own and maintain this car is cheap for what it is. Yea it creaks, squeaks, hard suspension and loud at times. Will suck the fuel if you drive it. I think I can live with it.

There are many other cars with automatics and little mpg gages that may be a better fit. But we know you dont want that. Do you?

 

This is exactly wrong. Gasoline consumed is based off how much air is going into the engine. This is absolutely related to rpm! At a given speed, same power output, you will consume LESS fuel running at lower rpm with a wider-open throttle than running at higher rpm with a smaller throttle opening.
You will have greater frictional losses at the higher-rpm setting, and you will also have greater pumping losses as it takes more effort for the engine to pull air through the narrower throttle opening. Worse fuel economy, if you don't believe me try testing your highway mpg running in 5th gear.

The throttle pedal does NOT directly correspond to rate of fuel consumption. It didn't in carbureted cars and it doesn't in fuel injected cars. Higher rpm => higher fuel consumption at the same throttle setting.

 

Sorry ZDan you've got that wrong. Yes there will be some very minor difference in frictional losses in the engine & transmission, but basically, provided you are in a reasonably efficient rev range for your cars breathing, no matter which gear you are in, or rev range, it takes the same amount of fuel to do the same work. This is particularly so when we are talking here about low/moderate engine output.

To accelerate the car from 30 to 40 MPH will require a smaller throttle opening, with more revs in a lower gear, & a larger throttle open with less revs in a higher gear, but in the normal operating range it will take the same application of effort in either, requiring the use of a very similar amount of fuel to supply that power.

 

When did this become a hypermile forum?

I suggest if we want to discuss hypermileing an S2k that someone start a new thread to discuss that topic.

 

Of course at the same speed the same power/rate-of-doing-work is required at the wheels. The greater losses of running at higher rpm with a smaller throttle opening will have you consuming more fuel at higher rpm, depending on gearing of course. With the S2000's transmission gearing, I can promise you that you'll be getting better fuel economy during 75mph cruise at 4100rpm in 6th than you would at 4900rpm in 5th! And you'd get better fuel economy still if you had a much taller 6th gear that put you at 3500rpm at 75mph.

You're doing the same amount of work, but you'll have reduced pumping and frictional losses at the lower rpm.

Yes, similar amount of power at the rear wheels. As long as you aren't lugging, you'll get better fuel mileage for the same acceleration profile with more open throttle settings and shifting sooner at lower rpm. But only to a point, of course! Go to far with large-throttle-opening/low-rpm and you will eventually wind up in a part of the map where the mixture goes richer, and also very high torque load at low rpm is not good for the engine (weak hydrodynamic wedge).

FWIW, I generally wind up shifting around 3500-4000rpm in town.

 

This was essentially a hypermileing thread from square one. It just involves the idea of what mechanically goes into fuel consumption. The only reason I'm interested in this is because it's my daily, and there are many times that I'd like to use as little fuel as possible for the sole reason of saving as much money on gas as I can with this car.

 

Freaking THANK YOU.

It should be obvious really just by using anecdotal evidence. They keep coming out with 8 and 9 speed autos with super-long highway gears for increased efficiency. Cars with huge, thirsty engines like Corvettes and Vipers have insanely long 6th gears, so long that top speed is achieved in 5th because even with 500lb/ft+, they can't pull such a long gear toward 200mph. CVTs like the one in my dad's '13 Accord keep revs very low (below 1,500rpm most of the time) to achieve better gas mileage. Yet somehow people believe that you want to be in a lower gear to save gas? In what world does that make sense?

Higher revs = more friction = more energy wasted. Less throttle at a higher rpm to maintain a given speed = more pumping losses than using more throttle at a lower rpm to maintain the same speed. It's been proven time and time again, I don't know why people are trying to argue otherwise.

 

The main point is to find the throttle input and rpm combination where the car is operating without working too hard (high RPM) or too uncomfortable (low RPM).

Obviously you want to cruise in 6th gear on Highway, but when I am just cruising around town I select the gear that will give me the lowest RPM and when accelerate, without any sense of vibration.

 

This is a good general rule. I find that steady cruising, as long as it's over 1,800rpm it's fine, but for anything more than slight acceleration it's happiest north of about 2,200. Most cars I've driven are find cruising at moderate speeds (30-40mph) as low as 1,500rpm (in fact my old Integra the manual said to shift to 5th at 35mph for steady cruising, which put it right at 1,500rpm), but the S2k is a little more high-strung.

 

8-9k in 1-2-3 then into 6th. Dunno why Honda gave it so many gears.