I go even further:  When the engine is cold or I am accelerating
slowly, I go to ~3000 -3500 in first gear, which gives me 2000 in
second gear.  Then I go to 3200 in second, which gives me 2000 in
third.  Third and fourth are a bit closer together; I go to 3800
in third, which gives me 2000 in fourth.  When the engine is
warm and I'm accelerating (relatively) qucickly, I go to ~4000
in every gear.  There doesn't seem much benefit to go above 4K
when accelerating, because when you shift into the next gear
you're around 3K, which is happily in the power band.

On the highway I cruise at 3600 or 3800 RPM, with very occasional
accelerations to a maximum of ~4500.

Obviously this is all based on guesswork on my part.  The lower (2000)
limit is based on how the engine sounds/feels, and the green area of
the tach.  I might go as low as 1600 or 1800 if I'm just feathering
the throttle very lightly, as when accelerating downhill, but I feel
comfortable with full throttle at 2000.  The upper limit (3800) is
a lot fuzzier because, as many have noted, the engine is very smooth.
Does anyone remember Muir's air cooled repair book "How to keep your
Volkswagen alive"?  Well, somewhere in there he suggests that the max
engine speed for a stock engine should be 4500 rpm, cruising around
3500.  So that's one end of the spectrum.  On the high end, the tach
is fully green till 4000 or 4200.  So the happy range should be somewhere
in there, the lower the better. 3800 keeps me with traffic, more or less,
and I worry less about engine problems due to sustained high RPMs.

Drive comfortably, and happy Northern Thanksgiving, (burp)

--tabe johnson
xtabe@yahoo.com
'87 Westy
Vancouver, BC

______________________________________________________________________
Post your free ad now! http://personals.yahoo.ca