Mr.Bape

Wait, so you can skip gears and it won't hurt the tranny? I want to know more about upshifting/downshifting properly since the 5.0 is the first manual I've ever owned.

Big_T_Judge

The top of 5th is 140 mph

MrSandman

Yep. Try going from 1st to 3rd to 5th next time you are out. Sure as hell beats Fords 1st to 4th skip shift.

pascal

Skip shift will never hurt your tranny, it's just the economical way to use a manual and save your clutch in the process.

hawkeye18

Back in the days before synchros, you had to sequentially shift through each gear whether you let the clutch out in said gear or not; you couldn't really skip gears without a lot of grinding.

Nowadays, you could shift from 1st straight into 6th if you wanted to (technically if you shift out of first at the redline you'd be at ~1000rpm when you get into 6th, I think, which is doable - if not exactly advisable). In fact, frequently on the way out from work I do a 1-2 blast, which leaves me at 60mph. I then shift directly into 6th and begin cruising.

Hell, if I'm going to do a power downshift at 40mph, it's going to be into 2nd, which should get me about 4000rpm. If it's just a normal downshift, it'll be into 5th, where 40mph is about 1400rpm. Here's how I downshift for situations where acceleration is not important:

Above 50: 6th (yes, I know that's not a downshift)
Above 40: 5th
Above 30: 5th
Above 20: 3rd
Above 10: 2nd

For power downshifts:

60: 3rd
50: 2nd
40: 2nd
30: 1st

Do keep in mind I have 3.55s, YMMV.

Gidyupp

All the good stuff happens north of 4,000 RPM

hawkeye18

I've found generally that 4th as a whole is pretty useless. The speed gap where 5th is too high and 3rd is too low is about like... 3mph.

That having been said, if I'm cruising at 60mph and want to pass a foo, then I'll shift into 4th, generally. If I want to pass a foo while demonstrating aurally how slow I think he's going, I'll shift into 3rd.

VistaBlue

For passing/hooning, I've used these few rules for hitting that "sweet spot" in the powerband:

If you're going 65-80 mph, use 4th
If you're going 45-65 mph, use 3rd

Those speed ranges tend to make the most out of the gear - this is with 3.73 rear, btw.

JIM5.0

For the T56 with 4.10:1 rear gears, what would be the speeds for downshifting for each gear? The only reason why I ask is because the T56 is a totally different beast with totally different gear ratios.

ShaneM

4th at about 6000-6500 on the boss is 115-120