Optimum shifts

[gerard]

I have this little program somewhere that lists a ton of cars and you
specify torque and power and the rpm at which they happen, and also
other things such as gear ratios, vehicle CD, tyre and wheel size,
vehicle weight and a few other things. It then has some simulation where
it works out the best accelleration and top speed and things like that.
At the end of the run you can see where it decided to shift gears in
order to obtain the desired effect. It's a DOS program. Let me know if
you want it. I'm sure I still have it on this machine.

A friend of mine studied mechanical engineering at the University of
Cape Town and they once had an assignment to use Microsoft Excel to do
all these calculations. It worked out well. It figured out accelleration
graphs in each gear and could work out the best performance for the
vehicle (if I recall correctly).

G.