[V8] interested in increasing fuel economy?

[Bastian Homburg]

increasing fuel economy in manual trans models is easy, at least for the 
likes of me who have a six-speed: Swap the transmission for one out of a 
TDI model. Those have super-tall gearing in V. and VI. gears (0.56 
instead of 0.68 in VI. gear). Revs at highway speeds will drop greatly 
(2000 rpm at 65mph instead of at 50) and highway fuel economy increases 
significantly by ca. 1.5l /100 km. Of course, acceleration performance 
suffers, but nothing a quick downshift when passing will not fix :).
I know two people who have done this (albeit in C4s)here in $10/gallon 
Europe and they both were super happy with the results. This will also 
work for the 5-speeds but not p&p (different driveshafts, different 
transmission mounts etc., not to mention the unavailability of these 
boxes in North America whereas here they are plentiful and cheap.


Steve B wrote:
> Cool find!  Since my cars are 5-speeds it wouldn't be of much help for me, but I am interested in increasing fuel economy.
>
>
>> I was browsing our auto transmission online because I have such an active and exciting life. I ran across a forum of BMW 8 Series owners whose cars use the RWD version of our box. A forum member in Germany hated the fuel economy and decided to get an engineer involved and they developed an add-on box that makes the transmission kickdown come in earlier. It even looks like the units might connect directly to our transmission control units without their having to change the software. My question is, would anybody be interested something like this?
>>