Hi all,

Ok so, I was out over the weekend on a fairly nice winters day here in Edmonton Alberta Canada and I was out taking my Stang for a bit of a boot.

All seems / seemed fine as I was running the car through gears 1 - 3. Give it some gas and she got up and went but when I put it into 4th gear she just didnt seem to wanna go no more (not really making any more power). It would SLOWLY creep and climb up the RPM scale but no more OOOMPH of any kind it seemed.

I cant say it was "bogging" as such, it just seemed to "flatline" as it were so needless to say that when I was able to get it into 5th gear that it was just flat as a pancake as well.

Is this fairly common with our cars? Does anyone know what could be causing this?

The car is a 2000 3.8L 5 Speed which is bone stock.

Please advise.

Thanks...

 

It has to do with gearing.
1-3 gears in the trans actually increase the final drive ratio for acceleration
4th gear is 1.1 so you are using the 3.27 final drive ratio
5th gear is an overdrive designed for fuel mileage and lowers your final drive ratio taking away your oomph feeling of acceleration

 

Thanks for the reply on this. So essentially then there is nothing wrong with the acceleration of my car?

I would have assumed that in 4th gear there still should be some "get up and go" though. As for 5th gear, I kind of was under the impression that it was more of a "cruising" gear.

I appreciate the info however...

 

1-3 are the get-up and go gears on the 3.8 5 speed (I used to own one). 4th still has some go to it but only if you are over 60 mph. 5th..cruising only.

When I was looking for acceleration and I was maxing out the gears I would leave it in 3rd until 80ish then upshift to 4th. 80 is redline in 3rd.

 

Hmmmm... Ok, that kinda makes sense then but can you explain what you mean by "80 is redline in 3rd"?

Oh wait, you mean 80 MPH right? Im in Canada and 80 KPH is only about 50 MPH so I was confused... :-P