I was on the highway today, tossed it into 5th, and was cruising at ~60 mph when I noticed I was at 3k rpms, seemed a bit high to me. That normal?

 

I had made a thread on the exact same thing about 2 days ago. From the responses I got, this is normal for our cars.

 

that really sucks for you 1.8t guys, i can go 80mph at 3k rpms

 

Def normal. At 80mph I'm at about 3400rpm

 

It's weird, because in my 5spd I run at 3k @ 60mph, but in my automatic I run at 2.5k @ 60mph.

They must have different gear ratios...

 

They do.

 

Ya i'm not a big fan of the manual for that. I went from the Tiptronic where i could do 75 at 3k and get good gas mileage to the manual that goes 65 at 3k....

 

they have different ratios because the torque converter does just that. you have around the same amount of torque at 2.5k as a direct drive transmission has at 3k.

 

Very normal for a heavy 4 cylinder car. Lower RPMS doesn't mean your going to be getting better gas mileage since it will take more throttle to keep it at fwy speeds.

3500-4000 rpm during fwy speed is not a big deal for a engine that redlines at 7k. Some of the older Audi cars had a gear setup that put the rpms even higher since it had a 4.11 final drive with the same 5th gear ratio.

 

I was going to say, the RPMs alone are not the determining factor for your gas mileage. Many other factors at play here.