TD5 What Gear at What Speed?

[tcanact]

Having recently moved from a 300tdi Disco to a TD5 Defender, I have got over some of the culture shock of driving the Defender but I was wondering at what approx. speed I should be changing up through the gears?

I reason why I ask is that if I'm doing say just over 30mph in 4th, its fine when I'm accelerating, but say I ease of the throttle a little to steady my speed a small amount of kangaroo juice is added... almost seems that I'm going to slow for the gear. In 3rd the engine sounds as though I need to change up, or is this just the TD5 and I need to get used to it and give it a little more welly?

Thanks

Tom

[crwoody]

The Defenders in general are quite low-geared compared to the Discos, that's why some people stick Disco transfer boxes into their Deafeners to improve the comfort and economy at higher speeds, maybe that's already been done to yours?

I tend to find I'm often in fifth at not much over 30 and it will drive quite happily like that, need to change down for a bit more oomph - going up a hill or whatever but generally quite smooth, (it's all relative )

The Td5 does have a different sound to it though, being a 5 pot instead of 4, so maybe that's something that you'll need to get used to. A rev counter might help to give you a better idea of what's going on under the bonnet, it's relatively easy to fit the right one.

[Andrew Chua]

for those who love early change up. i'm changing up at about 2.1k rpm in first, 2.2k rpm in 2nd, 1.9k rmp in 3rd and 2k rpm in forth.

averages about 2k rpms for each change up.

this takes things easy, so sometimes when i boot it hard, i get black smoke due to the stuck carbon. but after awhile it clears and nothing has gone bad in the past 5yrs.

[GL88]

I'm keeping an eye on mine at the moment to confirm my suspicion that changing up early increases fuel consumption.

Some time ago I replaced the exhaust centre box with a straight through pipe. In general driving that reduced turbo lag at lowish revs and made changing into 5th practical around 35mph. In addition the pipe created a bit of a boom around 30mph in 3rd gear which encouraged changing into 4th around 28mph. But fuel consumption increased by around 1.5mpg.

Since then I've had the final drive ratio raised with Disco gears and that gave me back 2mpg. And now it has been re-mapped and that has robbed me of a few mpg though it is too early to say how many. To complicate things further I've since re-fitted the exhaust centre box so that now I can drive comfortably at up to 35mpg in 3rd gear and this has certainly improved mpg again but once again I need to do a few tanks to get a decent average.