New owner - past lurker - a couple of questions

Had a Nissan Altima messing with us on the interstate yesterday. I had the cruise set at 80. He'd pass and slow up, pass and slow up.

Mine seems to have some kind of limiter at 130 or else it's limited by wind resistance at exactly 130. The speed would slowly fluctuate between 130 and 128.

But, it will do 130 quite smartly. With the top down and a redhead in the passengers seat with her feet up on the dash. (That's my wife).

No, I never saw the Altima again.

And for the self proclaimed newsgroup cops, yada, yada, yada.

Jim

I'm a little confused as to the conneciton between the two paragraphs above. Did you just get tired of playing dueling cruise controls and floor it to 130 mph??

I'm always confused.

Not dueling cruise controls. He'd pull in front and then slow down a lot, like to 65.

At my wife's suggestion, I downshifted to 5th gear and ran it up to redline and then shifted to 6th.

Jim

Actually, it's based on tach, not speed. If you did that in a different gear, you'd find that it is limited at a different speed that also corresponds to ca. 7700 rpm in that gear (I recall that's where it was set in my '91 and '01, don't know if it still is in the newer model).

When you're tooling along at 130, be extremely careful not to downshift--5th to 4th, for example, when you mean to go 5th to 6th. While the rev limiter prevents the engine from taking itself into dangerous rpm territory, there's nothing to prevent the car from pulling the engine to redline and beyond through injudicious shifting at high speed. Even if you don't let the clutch out, I've heard that downshifting to too low a gear at a high speed can be very bad for the transmission as well.

Eric Lucas

I always do what my wife tells me, too. They're always right...and can't complain afterward if they're not.