Those of you with the above gearbox, at what speed do you reach 6th gear?

 

I've driven my Mk. 3 SE L 2016 94 miles about town so far and have reached 6th gear only once when I reached a shade over 40mph.

 

My previous Octy was into 6th around 30mph if you were gentle with the right foot.

Does depend on driving circumstance. If on an incline it will not shift up so quick and hold maybe 4th or 5th a little longer. I can be in 4th at 40mph.

if you're on a gentle downhill gradient it will be in 5th at about 32mph.  It's never tried to be in 6th at that speed in the past 21 months of driving.

My petrol 2016 2L Tsi Dsg is doing 42mph before it goes into 6th gear if that's any help.

Whilst on this what are the engine revs at 70mph?

Looking at getting this setup but on my test drive the nearest dual carriageway was too far away to check it out.

Around 2,100 RPM at 70

On the 2.0 TDI 150, with the manual gearbox in 6th gear, the max engine torque starts to be available at 100km/h (62mph).

This should not be much different with the 6 gears DSG.

In the same exercise, the 1.4 TSI 140 would allow shifting in 6th gear from 70km/h (43mph).

 

See the graph(*) below, showing the engine torque on one hand, and the torque transmitted to the wheel (what makes the car accelerate) on the other hand.

Comparison done between the O3 2.0 TDI 150 Manual (black curves) and O3 1.4 TSI 140 Manual (blue curves).

 

Your observation is the consequence of the quite narrow usable rev range of the diesel engine, and the longer development of its transmission, needed to cope with its high engine torque.

Transmission ratio in 6th gear is designed  to bring torque values (thus power) to the wheels close to the one provided by the petrol engine at high speed (>100km/h).

The consequence for the diesel  is a lack of torque in 6th gear at low speed (below 100km/h and 1750 rpm).

 

For more flexibility, and ability to drive on the torque at low/middle speeds, you should have bought the petrol.

 

(*)

(Details: Curves are showing torque values depending on the car speed, not revs.

That's the reason why, having different ratios in 6th gears, the engine torque curves are more or less translated to the right.

For a selected gear, here the 6th, there is a direct translation between the engine rev and the car speed. This allows, knowing the engine torque curve based on the revs, to build the engine torque curve based on the car speed. The torque transmitted to the wheel is a direct translation (homothetia actually) from the engine torque based on the transmition ratio)

Edited 27 May, 201610 yr by JPH0091

On a longer run today on the A34 in 6th gear a lot of the time from about 42mph (SatNav assessed speed) engine revs seemed very low IIRC barely reaching 1800 (this may be my memory recalling inaccurately).

 

Just a thought I may have been the cause of large tailbacks as I wasn't particularly fast as I was enjoying my new car.

80mph is 2400rpm, the DSG geRbox has different ratios to the manual by almost 20% higher revving which is one of the reasons the diesel DSG is worse on fuel and has higher emissions.