Shift Light Setting

[NeilD]

looking for an initial setting to set my shift light to

Pinto 2.0 efi - no mods

[Guest timswait]

How long's a piece of string? Ford reccomend 5800rpm as maximum continuous speed, the rev limiter doesn't kick in until 6200 though. It all depends how you want to drive the car. If you're using it on track you'll want to use all the revs so set it to about 6000rpm, if it's for the road you probably won't look at it anyway, and just change by ear.

[Snapperpaul]

Injection rods and pistons will stand the occasional foray to 7200 but not continuous.

You should set the shift light to maximum power which is dependant on your cam, set the rev limiter to a safe over rev limit

[Guest timswait]

Surely you want to set your shift light to above maximum power (which I believe for a standard EFi Pinto is between 500-5500)? If you upshift at peak power then you drop the engine down out of it's power band, don't you want to use the revs on both sides of max power?

[Longboarder]

If you have some idea of the torque curve and of the change in revs when you change gear from 2 to 3 and 3 to 4 at about 6000 rpm then you can see what gives optimal torque over that rev range.

 

Nigel

 

Pic shows what I mean.

[Snapperpaul]

Still working on my shift light settings from the Megajolt and can have 4 other outputs so was going to set the lights for peak torque around 4300 peak power at 5900 and a nominal rev limit of 6500 to start with. Also plan the first light to come on at the point the engine comes on cam.

The rev limit of 6500 will give me 60 in second so i may need a more peaky cam than the 285 i have at the moment

With the Megajolt i can real time log what is going on so will be able to see how long I take to change after the red light goes on.

It may be that at 5900 when the light goes on i don't actually change until 6100

[Guest chris brown]

looking for an initial setting to set my shift light to

Pinto 2.0 efi - no mods

I would have thought 5800 would be about right but not really required the rev limiter soon lets you know that you’ve overshot

[NeilD]

Thanks folks

[Grim]

i set mine to 3100 rpm to remind me not to over rev in the wet, and also when i go above 70 in 5th! I rarely rev toward the limiter but when i do i go by ear or look at the speedo. Power drops off cataclysmically over 6000rpm!

[Guest timswait]

Power drops off cataclysmically over 6000rpm!

And even more so over 6200

[Guest chris brown]

And even more so over 6200

You could be right there Tim to about zero I recon. Mine pulls fairly strongly right up to the limiter so overtaking in 3rd can be quite interesting at just over 80mph.

[Longboarder]

The con rods are the weak link in carb and injection engines. The 200 block ones are good to 6700 and the 205 injection rods to 6900 but that begs the question. No point fitting sidedraughts to a 205 block engine and trying to rev it to 6900 as it probably won't get there except in first or second gear. So 6200 is fine for the standard engine. If you have put in a 285 cam and done a few head mods then the engine may feel like it will pull to 7000. Mine felt like it would and I set my limiter to 6500 for safety. I had a fairy worn bottom end but had no failures.

 

Nigel

[Guest timswait]

I thought the big end bolts were an even weaker link than the rods themselves, hence people fitting the ARP ones?