I’m happy with changing up gear to accelerate, so for example 3rd gear up to say 40/45 before change into 4th. I’m happy with principle of keep engine spinning faster to cool after a climb or when coming of motorway. Simple question is - when driving for miles in suburban 30mph zone, so no acceleration 4th feels right. I often put it in 3rd, to allow cooling (doubt it needs cooling here), or to be kinder to the engine (not sure what this really means in this sense though). It sounds a bit high revving and at that speed for miles, it’s annoying. 4th feels powerful and sounds right in a boring long 30mph flat stretch, 2 litre type 4, would this be recommended?
Ta for that information, but it mentions 3rd gear range is 15 to 52 mph. Anywhere approaching 50 mph in 3rd would be climbing a hill, or accelerating e.g. a slip road. I was more thinking of endless flat suburbia at 30mph, so which gear here?
Yeh, that’s what I reckoned. It would be a problem if you regularly used 4th at 30mph as a base to accelerate from
Can you shed any light on this one? Not heard of this before - relatively new to all this - bought our bus just before xmas!
Try driving around the Peloponnese and Greek Islands. We had nearly 2 months and never saw 4th. Our transmissions prefer revs to lugging so you'll be fine. Give the bus a treat and change the gear oil if you haven't done it for a while. Fresh oil will aid cooling and slow down gear erosion
So if you’ve just climbed a long steep hill, say in 3rd or second, the engine has worked hard and will be hot. If there was a flat stretch after the climb you could be in say 4th doing 30mph. The engine will need cooling after the climb and revs in 4th at around 30mphish will be low. If you put it in 3rd and went 30 engine spins faster and therefore cooling fan spins faster. Worst thing you could do is stop the engine at the top of the climb as heads could crack in this scenario
There's no need to do anything other than drive it normally. If you saw quickly the heads cool down again once your foot comes off the pedal, whatever gear, you wouldn't worry.
