4000 RPMs in second gear would be 45MPH plus, not likely on such a short street. The transmission had to have been in first gear.
Help! House on the 3rd steepest city street in the COUNTRY - 34% grade - AWD? hp.? performance tires
@Nevada_545 - with what engine? We have a 2009 Nissan Cube manual. No way can I hit 45 in 2nd without tearing it up. I’m in 5th in the Cube at 45 mph comfortably (and quietly) on the low side of 2000+ rpm. 4th gear at that speed would be pushing the envelope unless I were driving up a long slow grade, not a radical hill. Of course, the Cube has virtually no horsepower at just 114. All I know is that when I switched the Toyota into manual mode and locked it in 1st the rpm’s were half of what he got ascending in D at about the same speed. The burning smell was intense, not what you want to notice on a brand new car.
You really can’t compare two different cars and assume they’ll be at the same RPM at a given speed in a given gear. I had an old Caravan that could do 50mph in first gear. It took a freaking long time to get up to that speed because the gear was very tall.
Looks like you could do around 55mph in 2nd gear in your Cube at redline, btw…
Yikes! I don’t think I’d want to do that very often.
Just did a test run w/2015 Volvo XC60 T6 AWD. It sure felt heavy compared to the RAV4 and Subaru. It also rolled forward about 8-10 inches at full stops both going forward and in reverse, which I guess is due to the weight? But the other two didn’t do that with AWD. The Subaru definitely had better traction and balance on the grade when stopping and starting. This was a beautiful car but felt like a behemoth even though they’re almost the same size. Strange.
34%, my bad. Sorry.
One more thing to consider if you get the Subaru, and this probably applies to any other vehicle as well, but this hill of yours is going to be very hard on the transmission so what ever you get, you should follow the service recommendations for the transmission as if you do a lot of towing. For a Subaru, that means a fluid exchange every 25k miles.
I expect that all the other brands will have something similar, maybe with intervals as little as 15k miles but I doubt any will be greater than 30k miles.
I lived in LA where the freeway on ramp are extremely short. With a 105 horsepower xB, you keep it in 2nd and punch it until it hits 55 before shifting to 3rd. Then there was this hill closed to where I lived that called for a downshift to second at the top. By the time I was at the foot of the hill, the car was doing 50 with the engine close to the redline. There was never any burning smell when I was at the helm, even as I spun the engine to redline in second
If there was a hint of tire slip with the rav before awd kicked in, the burning smell may be the clutch pack sending power from the front to the rear. Unlike the Subaru and possibly the Audi that I mentioned, most awd don’t send power to the free wheels until the drive wheel starts to slip
That is not how you find the angle of the grade.
I know that, but he asked how to find the percent grade, not the angle.
If I have one, I can figure the other. In my case, I wanted to make sure I was using the same system you were. It is really easy to wander off if we are not careful.
Your [GPS]information is outdated
You are exactly correct. Not only is my information outdated, but so am I. I also worked for a company which made GPS equipment, though not at my site. And, I retired in 1997. Thanks much for the update!
Thanks @keith - that sort of advice is useful and good to know. Every car can get up here once but we need one to do this reliably 5-6 times a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
It could be worse- you could have this driveway 
@TwinTurbo - Yikes! How awful. People often think this narrow lane is a driveway but it’s not. It’s a totally neglected easement titled city street that is not maintained.
Hey? Anybody out there still? Getting ready to order car. Which Subaru Forester (specific just to our hill situation) should we go with? Standard 2.5l CVT or the more robust XT model with paddle shifters? I have read at least one consumer review stating that the low gear option (L) in the standard CVT is weak for hill climb and descent and even in X-mode required “excessive braking.” Although he also mentioned speeds over 25 mph, which will never be the case on this hill. I suspect he was describing long steep grades of some distance and speed. Ours is super short and steep, so a steady crawl suits us just fine. No need to come flying up here. I definitely don’t want to ride the brakes either on hilly San Francisco streets. In my Cube, I brake intermittently when descending steep hills in 1st and the low gear is totally adequate for eliminating excessive braking.
Thoughts?
I’m not a fan of CVT cars in general. I’d go with the normal one.
You mean the manual transmission? Can’t get leather seats in those. Or did you mean the base 2.5l CVT as opposed to the turbo charged XT with paddle shifters?
I just looked at the “build your own” Forester part of Subaru’s website. In addition to being highly annoyed that they consider carbon fiber key chains and SVT valve stem caps to be “performance items,” I note that you are entirely correct.
Honestly, I’d be looking at something else if I had to get a weird transmission that people won’t know how to work on in order to get leather (and for me, leather is a requirement). You might consider looking at an Acura RDX. Similar-sized car, it’ll work very well for you, and leather (not leather-trimmed cloth as in the Subaru) is standard.
The difference in the transmission between the two Subaru models should be more in ,flexibility then strength. One is not more robust then the other. I think you should buy the one you like as both will do the job, as well or better as you have found, then any another car. That was pretty much the concensus when this discussion started 18 pages ago. . So Imo, it’s a personal choice from here on out. Nearly Everyone seems to like then overall performance and the “guts” of a turbo; you have to decide if it’s worth the added price.
They are nearly $10k more then the base model so it has to be your choice. We are happy to spend your money and encourage you to buy one.
As far as CVTs are concerned, I don’t know how long they have to be out before people will think they are normal and reliable. Is there a statute of limitations for these things ?
@dagosa - I was wondering what you’d say. . . 
Actually, once you’re at the trim level that gets leather seating (The Limited) you are very near the price of the base model XT Touring. The only bells and whistles I want are better sound and leather. I could care less about the other stuff and Subaru gets lousy reviews on technology - the interface of their GPS, music, and BlueTooth is pathetic so I’ve already set the bar low on expectations there.
Why does everyone hate CVT so much? If it’s so bad then why does Subaru chose to offer it instead of something better?
We hate CVTs because we are weaned on gears and grease ! It is a departure from traditional technology though and it’s reasonable that because most here don’t own them or have personal experience with them would be hesitant about recomend them. I made a statement several years ago that I would not buy one till Honda and Toyota, the two stalwarts of CR reliability, started to make them standard. Low and behold,they have put them in Accords and Corollas, two cars with ultra reliable history. Subaru is up there too. They would not jeopardize their standing. They have not shown up in surveys as major problems in these reliable cars.
Because a cvt has many fewer parts, they have the potential to be MORE reliable in certain compact cars…btw, if I had the money, I would buy the most powerful motor as long as it was also reasonably economical.
CVTs have had a bad history for reliability until recently. They used rubber belts at first, similar to your timing belt but have now switched to a steel belt. Not sure on the particulars, but all of a sudden, all the major players got on board with them, even Toyota. I bought a Subaru last year that has a CVT with the paddle shifters, I am hoping the bugs have been worked out.
At first, I did not like the paddle shifters. I was used to a standard transmission and a clutch and though that paddle shifters on an automatic to be a waste. It wasn’t in the owners manual, but someone here pointed out that the down shift paddle would work in the auto mode which is handy when you find your self approaching a blind curve while going downhill.
I finally had time simultaneously with access to my own level yesterday afternoon. then, today we had a day trip into Tehuacan partly grocery shopping, and partly printing photos for people. Photos are such a perfect gift here! A man who can walk to Lake Michigan has family here and he sent photos by computer for his family. Wonderful people.
Anyway, the hill I mentioned is a block long. No place for a running start. It was build quite some time ago, so the surface is irregular, so i had to study a while before deciding where to measure.
I marked with a chalk a place, put the end of the level there, then made it level, then put a tape measure from the bottom of the end of the level to the street, and recorded that distance.
I played with it, what we used to call it in the high tech factory where I worked, er, received my pay, hee, hee, for over 31 years to see how much slop this method had until I was satisfied with my measurements.
The level was 24.25 inches long at the bottom. The fall varied between 4.8 inches, roughly and 5.3 inches. Looks to me like 19.7 to around 21.8 percent. This was not the slop factor or my measurement; this was the variation depending upon where I was.
To pick a valid reading, I moved the tape and level around, and gave a good estimate of both ends of slop then called it between them. Some of the men here will understand this. Those who don’t, sorry, I can’t explain it any better.
That happens to be the tangent, I think. Arctangent gave me 11.2 to 12.3 degrees.
When I calculated the hypotenuse using the squares – square root formula, 24,72, all three arc functions came out at 11.2 to 12.3 degrees. So, I concluded my measurements were correct.
However, if I made a visible mistake, I accept corrections.
We do park on these hills. They can be dangerous. One day maybe 8 years ago, I was walking down a main street. At the top of that hill was a vehicle stalled and men working on it. As I walked down the hill a very old Pepsi truck came up, and had to stop for the stalled vehicle.
Further down the hill, i met a distant kin of my wife. Old but not as old as I am. Francisco.
A very short distance further, I heard a noise and turned to see that old Pepsi truck barreling down the hill backwards, with no driver. Francisco went running frantically toward his nieces house. Just as the truck got to where he was, it turned sharply 90 degrees and squashed him like a bug. it took him 4 hours to stop breathing. I went to his funeral. They had an excellent mariachi band playing old Mexican love songs. I thought that was an excellent funeral. Here, no one goes home until the dirt is shoveled in and tamped down well.
I go every year on Day of the Dead to pay my respects to his family. They all know me as the man who saw their dad killed. And, the man who would have died if that truck hadn’t turned 90 degrees where it did.
I try to have a plan for all events. I realized I didn’t have one for a runway truck. Now I do. Get as close to a building as you can and lay down FAST! Maybe you survive; maybe you don’t, but that’s your best choice.
All you mechanics well know what happened to that old truck. The driver stopped on that hill, and had to hold the brakes. The old single master cylinder collapsed under pressure and the truck took off, and the driver and assistant jumped.
Wow! @irlandes what a story! So sad. Usually young drivers run into trouble up here. It terrifies me to see trucks park on the grade without blocks unless they have air brakes. Our regular UPS driver backs up 2/3, blocks his tires, and delivers but he’s had this route 26 years. FedEx doesn’t but those drivers are young and inexperienced. Just yesterday I saw a video of a runaway FedEx truck but luckily no one was hurt. It amazes me how confident some folks are in driving up here: ignorance is bliss, I guess. 34% is nothing to fool around with.