Hello Everyone,

Just had a couple of questions I would like some help with.. I just bought myself a new 2010 Civic SI this week... it is actually the first standard car that I have owned... I am pretty comfortable driving it now, just wondering if people could give their thoughts about city and highway driving.. seems like the RPMs have been tuned pretty high on this car.. in the city going 60kilometers an hour what gear should I be driving it.. also what about on the highway driving 100-120 kilometres an hour ( I am from Canada)... also wondering if there is any safety features on this vehicle to stop it from being accidentally put into reverse while driving (ie. shifting from 5th gear to reverse by accident) Any comments and or opinions would be greatly appreciated.

 

idk about speed to rpm ratios (especially in kilometers/hr)
but it should defienitely something to stop u from shifting into reverse (all my civics have even when barely moving)

 

I never drove a Civic stick. In fact, I never heard of one, certainly here in Los Angeles none of them exist. But on the old British cars I have driven, you had to push down on the stick to get it into reverse. That was the lock out they used. Don't know with Civic. Try your owners manual (glove box book).
dc

 

There is a safety feature that keeps you from being able to shift into 1st gear while over a certain speed. I don't think there is one for reverse... on a 5 speed civic the safety concept is that you have to move the stick further to the right to shift into reverse than to shift into 6th gear (if it were there). For example, if you thought your 5 speed was a 6 speed for some reason and went to shift into 6th, you would not be able to move the lever straight down like on a 6 speed... you would have to move into neutral, then over to the right, then down.

On a 6 speed it's the same concept... reverse is farther over than 6th, and since there is no 7th gear, there is no way to get intuitively get into reverse by accident... since normally for that to happen by accident you would have to be moving the shift lever down... but since there is no 7th gear, you wouldn't be above the reverse position in the first place, you would be next to it. Awful hard to make that kind of mistake.

Does that make sense? (it was pretty hard to type this up so that you could understand it)

There are literally thousands of manual Civics in LA.

 

thanks very much everyone... very helpful indeed!!