Recently sold my 1990 911 and bought a 2007 Cayman. Love the car, the handling is perfect. I have a question regarding RPMs and shifting. For the older 911, the prevailing wisdom is to rev the engine higher than most cars before shifting and to generally keep the RPMs up. What's the general usage for newer Porsches and the Cayman in particular?
There's a lot of it depends to this. Just slogging through traffic I general up shift around 3k and down shift if the revs get much below 2k if I'm more than just coasting.
Can't remember offhand if Porsche put min revs in the owners manual or not. They used to and it was typically around 2k for min. Something around this always felt right for smaller displacement engines.
These engines don't have a lot of torque. Especially if yours is a 2.7L. I grew-up with 4-banger sports cars, so I naturally like keeping the revs up even while cruising. Also, it makes it easier to accelerate without downshifting. But mostly it is a matter of personal preference.
I like the sound of the engine @ >3K :dance: (even if it isn't necessary). And I always shift a warmed-up engine at 4-5K.
When I first got my car I was having issues shifting from 1st to 2nd. The 2nd gear synchro just didn't feel like it was doing it's job as there was an odd feeling, almost a 'grind-like' feel, but not quite. Someone on P9 suggested shifting at 4-5k RPM and the issue disappeared. If I shift under 3500k RPM, I shift slowly. At 4500 and up I pull back quick and it shifts like a dream. Plus with the Numeric cables I can pull back hard and not have to worry about snapping anything. But like RSchwerer, once warmed up I shift at 4K and up.
Thanks for the responses! That's generally the way I have been doing it, I agree that shifting at the higher RPMs for 1st to 2nd feels better, it's good to see that someone else does.
I found that the 5 speed transmission was very resilient and once at operating temperature behaved well at higher revs. When I bought my 07 Cayman my previous recent cars were 6 speeds and it took a little while to figure out the best shift points for the 5 speed. It was something of a mystery why Porsche used that transmission (and there are a few 6 speed 2.7's around) but it seems well matched to that engine. I believe it's made by VW. There is nothing like the howl of the 2.7 winding out.
The up shift indicator in my '09 CS is nuts, it suggests shifting up to 6th at 40 mph. One can never reach 3000 rpm. But I'm sure that is just Porsche's way of trying to eek out every last drop of economy from the fleet.
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