As a 1st-gen Protege owner in search of a new car (I'm still keeping the old one--it's my race car), I took a test drive in a '02 ES. One thing struck me about it was how linear the torque curve was. Accelerating up through the gears onto the freeway, there was no noticeable jump in torque. The first gen cars came alive at about 3500 and really pulled from 4500 on up. That surge was missing from the '02 ES.

Since the car only had 18 miles on it, I wonder if this was just a tight engine, or a characteristic of the new motor? Any one else have similar experiences?

 

if you go to probenet.com, there are some dyno curves of the 2.0 liter engine. here is a baseline run:

 

so hey, a question concerning the 2.0 Protege engines, if I was racing, at which points should I shift in each gear? Going to the redline in each gear doesn't seem like the fastest way to accelerate, am I wrong, right?

 

This isn't an easy question. It depends on what type of racing you're doing.

For drag racing, or maximum acceleration, ideally, you want to shift at the point where you have more torque in the lower gear (this requires a dyno sheet). Lacking the dyno sheet, generally you want to shift so that you come into the next gear at the top of the torque curve. If you know what your torque peak is, you can find the rpm to shift at which will let you hit it in each successive gear.

For racing where you have turns, especially autocrossing, sometimes it pays to run up against the rev limiter as you come up to a turn. Unless you expect to spend a lot of time in the higher gear, it's not worth it time-wise to shift. Likewise, shifting down to first often is slower than staying in second.

 

That screwed me up when i was auticrossing. i did my first autocross about a month ago and at a couple of the really tight corners, i just couldnt decide whether i should drop into first or just stay in second.


-Andrew
'02 P5