So is it possible to find a 2nd gen with a 6 speed manual trans
 

Aye,

Just like the title says!

I was looking at Wiki,,,,,,

Looked like from the info out there on WkiapDEE Ah
that 2ndGeneration Fits could come with a six speed manual, is this true?

If so, are the hard to find? and How are they?

Maybe in another market like Japan.

It needs a 6th gear!!!!!

im actually cool with mine having a 5 speed. coming from a scion xa A/T that had a 4 speed automatic, anything over 80mph had the engine rpms going to high hell!

Not in the USA

No, and if it did, the 6th gear would probably have the same ratio as the 5th today. Why Honda does not understand that people want a high gear for level cruising is beyond me.

Because if it did people would complain about needing to downshift uphills. The 5MT is perfectly fine.

That's exactly it. You've hit the nail on its head.
It's also the reason why 3rd gen Fits have basically the same ratio on their 6th gear as the previous generations had on their 5th.

3rd Gen with 6 MT:
6th Gear Ratio : 0.730

2nd Gen with 5 MT:
5th gear: 0.727

1nd Gen with 5 MT:
5th gear: 0.757

So between the 2nd gen 5th gear and the 3rd gen 6th gear you only have a 0.4% difference. :violin:

I've actually noticed several times on large hills that I've had to downshift into 4th, especially when driving with a car full of people / cargo on roads with a 50mph limit. Otherwise if the revs are too low, the load gets into the 90-99% and speed decreases going up the hill.
I run a ScanGaugeII on my Fit and one of the parameters on display is engine load, mainly to avoid lugging the engine in 5th gear.

Revving a Honda engine at higher RPM's is always better than lugging it.

People are afraid of high revs. I don't know why but it's the case.

You will not get a better fuel economy if the gears are too long. I already tried it on another car and I got worse fuel economy.

It's pretty much impossible to make apples-to-apples fuel economy comparisons between two cars, unless both are same brand, make & year, same rims & tires, with the only variation being different transmissions.

You've mentioned a different car with very long gears got you worse fuel economy. But that's a different car and it could have a bigger engine, maybe it's less aerodynamic and heavier too.

In my '13 Fit after about 3 years, 46 K miles and 167 fill-ups I've got the following best & worst mileages:
* best tank was 41 MPG
* and lowest was 30 MPG
This is approx 35% difference between my best tank and worst one, on the same car, without any variation in mods other than winter / all-season tires and driving conditions.

Basically, my previous car was a 1994 Civic DX Hatchback. I had the input haft bearing that needed to be replaced in the transmission. While I was rebuilding the transmission, I swapped it with another transmission I had laying around. The transmission was from a Civic VX. The Civic VX was a build with fuel economy in mind and had VERY long gears.

So, basically, I kept the same exact car and just swapped the transmission with one that had longer gears. My fuel economy dropped and the performance also dropped. The engine was operating outside it's efficiency rance I guess and I always had to lug the engine to do anything. When I switched back the transmission, (a year later) the fuel economy came back.

This why I'm saying that longer gears doesn't necessarily result in better fuel economy.

I think what consumers want is a 6th gear beyond the existing 5th. This would be nice for flat, cruising highway speed. Right now it needs 3200 rpm (? or so) to sustain 110 km/h. Going faster seems to require exponential rpms, and the vehicle accelerates quite slowly. Once at speed, a higher gear might make it easier to sustain that cruising speed (lower rpms), but I think it just doesn't have the power to operate efficiently at that speed, and yeah, any inclines would be a problem.

A physicist once told me that:

1. Drag increases exponentially at higher speeds, and ultimately, more power is required. The power needs to match the gear ratio to operate efficiently, like the force a lever is optimized for. At higher speeds, the engine will need higher power outputs to match the greater power is required. At a certain point the engine isn't going to be operating efficiently,regardless of whether its at high rpms or lugging at lower rpms. I'd like to think that the transmission IS optimized for highway speed, but in reality its probably a balance between highway and city speeds.

2. If it made sense, the engineers would do it, especially after years of competition and design. If they did make a transmission like this, people would buy it. But it would have user problems, lugging at high speeds, and maybe not actually be much more efficient.

I won't be offended if I'm wrong about any of this.