The instruction manual for your car has these in there. I generally stick to 20km intervals.
1st > 0-20
2nd > 20-40
3rd > 40-60
4th > 60-80
5th > 80-over

If you look in your manual it'll be similar, maybe off by 2-3 ks for each gear. Sometimes when I'm driving on level ground with no one in the car and I'm just cruising down I might stick it in 5th gear when I'm doing over 65-70ks but that's not recommended if the car has load or you're going uphill or something (unless you have a V8). try googling, this is a very basic principal and there should be plenty of articles about it. I've never read any of them I just learned when the engine needs another gear from an early age sitting in the car with my dad. To be honest I hardly look at the tacho...

Taking off is very easy you dont need explanation really, just feel the friction point on the clutch and bobs your uncle. The thing with your car is that it has a very heavy drive train because its AWD so the good news is that anything else you drive after this will feel like a feather.

And congrats on your purchase they're very nice cars to drive

You'll probably find that shifting around 3000rpm will have slightly better economy. Unfortunately, a boxer is not a terribly efficient engine. I don't think 500rpm is going to make a great deal of difference for you. When I had the stock engine in I would shift at 3500rpm and averaged about 9L/100km. I could get lower, but it was a pretty boring drive...

Automatic gearboxes are geared very differently to manuals. Don't bother comparing them.
There is also a lot more to economy than less revs = better. Every engine has a sweet spot in the rev band where the combination of engine design and tune will give you the best economy, and that's where you need to sit most of the time. On a little 4 cylinder that isn't making much torque, this isn't going to be 2500rpm.

The noise you're hearing is quite possibly part of the exhaust shielding that has cracked - it's very common and just needs to be welded back up.

Oh, and I'm not surprised you miss vtec if you're shifting at 2500rpm

B4Cruiser wrote:

Your avatar contradicts your RX?

XoN wrote:

Automatic gearboxes are geared very differently to manuals. Don't bother comparing them.
There is also a lot more to economy than less revs = better. Every engine has a sweet spot in the rev band where the combination of engine design and tune will give you the best economy, and that's where you need to sit most of the time. On a little 4 cylinder that isn't making much torque, this isn't going to be 2500rpm.

The noise you're hearing is quite possibly part of the exhaust shielding that has cracked - it's very common and just needs to be welded back up.

Oh, and I'm not surprised you miss vtec if you're shifting at 2500rpm

Thank you for the info. I still would like to know why this noise escalates(from 0-2900 rpm) and then at 3000 rpm screeches, then the boxer rumbling(normal engine noise) continues till 5500 rpm when it is repeated again(screeching). My question is why does it repeat? From another forum a person stated this:

"if you have an early gen 4 it may be fitted with a dual mass flywheel, when it deterioates it becomes very noisy and you would swear it is an exhaust shield rattle, I spent hours trying to stop what I thought was a heat shield, subaru replaced the F/wheel under warranty."

I think that this is more likely to be the cause because uneven wear of the double mass flywheel can cause the repeated screeching. I have heard that this flywheel cannot be machined so is it better to get the same one or just a solid one. I'm just trying to figure out what's wrong because I don't have a second car to use if I take my car to a mechanic. Thx.

B4Cruiser wrote:

hmm i'll reserve my comment on that i guess.