Engine RPM
 

Hey just a quick question. I purchased my latest saturn (97 SL2) to commute to and from the hospital I work at. There are sections of my commute on the highway that have 70 mph speed limits for long sections. My issue is with my manual trans in 5th gear at 70mph the engine RPMs are at 3000 and go up if I try to actually keep up with traffic. Even though the engine doesn't red line untill around 7k it sounds like the little thing is screaming at 3000 and above. I usually dont let it rev up past 2300-2500 or so during normal driving to conserve gas. Is it okay to sustain RPMs on these little engines around 3000 RPMs for long periods of time. I just dont want to cause any long term damage from doing this. I feel like I need another gear or something!

Most small electrical generators run at 3,600rpm ... with an OHC engine, this is not a bad thing. As long as your engine is sound, I wouldn't worry

Most of my driving is highway, and yes I occasionally try to shift to 6th.....
it is what it is. People including myself get hundreds of thousands of miles on these s cars--that's why you see so many still on the road. Keep up w the oil changes and you should be fine

3,000 rpm at 70 mph sounds a little high to me. Of course, it's been years since I've owned a manual shift. Both of my vehicles run around 2,300 rpm at 70 mph. Maybe your clutch is slipping. Or is this normal for those of you that have the manual shift cars?

normal

Just to doublecheck - I just took my '93SW2 (atuomatic) out to the Interstate, and did a couple of runs against my GPS. 3100 rpm gives me 70 mph. Tires may be a bit soft, but when I still worked for "the company", it was a 45 miles jaunt each way on the interstate. DOHC engine, and no oil usage between changes

just ran down I 95 yesterday -- OA is spot on yet again.

yeah, it seems that these little engines were geared to run higher RPM at freeway speeds... in my car, i turn about 3100 at 70 in 5th... in my wife's SL1, it's like 2400 RPM at 70... maybe you could get a tranny from a SOHC car as they are supposed to be geared longer... since the blocks are supposed to be the same, i imagine the bell pattern would be the same...

but I believe the pcm will be forever unhappy

The pcm will never shut up. it would be like after I did my trans swap with the automatic computer - always screaming its legs were cut off. Everything is the same, the 5th gear swap has been done a few times.

I normally run 80 down the highways round here, I wanna say it sits around 3400/3500 at that speed.

Im pretty sure 100 is like 44/4500 ish revs (cant remember haha wasnt looking down really)

Whenever in anything less than 6 cylinders, I always complain it needs a 6th