- Thu Mar 19, 2009 5:50 pm
#104352
According to the manual it was an option on 5 speed EX's as well. Though I've never seen/heard of one.
Many VX's lack the shift up light. I think maybe it only came on federal models. My VX is a federal 1992 and it had it.
Your VX will have a small white plug on the back of the cluster with a pink/grn wire (also red, red/blk, blk, yel). Cars with cruise control have the same plug but it's green and it has a blu/red wire in place of the pink wire. So cruise control is not compatible with the shift light interestingly enough.
But anyways that wire goes directly to the ECU. The ECU monitors several sensors (most likely TPS, Tach, MAP, VSS) and sends the signal when the conditions are met. It wont tell you to shift up if you're heavy on the throttle or your going uphill (or both). You absolutely need a VX or EX ECU from a car that has a shift up light. And of course you need the cluster and you'll need to run a wire to pin D18 to swap this into your car.
You could easily emulate it with an RPM switch, though it wont be as useful. You might as well just watch the tach and judge when to shift up based on how much throttle you're giving it.
For best fuel economy, you leave a stop with about 80% throttle and shift early. You always want to shift early even if you bog the car slightly, so much as it doesn't bog the car too much.
really dumb.
