hue

I've been practicing the heel to when turning onto side streets and when coming down exit ramps. It's a little difficult at first, but gets easier. To fully enjoy your Z you gotta pick-up your driving skilz. I know when I finally break my cherry at the track, heel to toe will be the skill that I will need to carry my speed out of turns.

BENSIN

Only if you have two right feet...

Mazinger Z

iTrader: (49)

My technique (yours might be different).

1. Press down clutch/brake at same time.
2. Downshift (example: move your shift **** from 3rd to 2nd).
3. Right afterwards, you "rev", "blip" the accelerator to match RPM (you should just remember how much you have to do it at that speed so you don't look down), with the side of your foot WHILE your foot is on the brake.
4. Let go of clutch, take your foot off the brake and accelerate.
5. You have just "heel-toed".

It sounds complicated, but when you do it, you'll know the difference it makes (lots!).

The same thing applies to downshifting except you don't touch the brake.

hidehide

iTrader: (3)

I have a question..
Do you guys use the side of your feet or the end of your foot?
When i tried to heel-toe, i need to move up my foot a bit on the brake, so that I can turn my foot to tap on the gas..
But since I move up, it is hard to keep the braking to be consistent...
Am I doing it wrong??

Jason@Performance

iTrader: (11)

I kinda roll my foot to the side...

Luis_23

undRgrNd350z

lol. heel toe is only necessary for track riding when you need to trail brake into corners. otherwise it is pointless.

samw1978

it's an everyday thing for me also

Jason@Performance

iTrader: (11)

+1

JunJTan

i posted the same thread about 2 weeks ago, lots people reply to it and do the heel and toe as a second nature on daily driving.

xenonk

you do it not to disrupt the car's balance around the corner.. it provides smooth transistion from one gear to the next..

for those people that think it's not neccessary for heel-toe, then I guess rev-matching doesn't matter either

I do it all the time and I spend very little time riding on the clutch.. helps keep the clutch happy and live very long..

On my WRX that I have tracked, autox, and daily drove and making 300 hp and about 300 tq (which is the limit on the stock tranny), my car never needed a new clutch until 80k miles.

How you drive is how you make your car last.

OutsiderZ5

iTrader: (1)

I heel-toe it everyday now. I would say my driving has greatly improved with it. Alot of people I know say its for racing (etc) but I did notice in that video with the Z, M3, S2000, Boxster that the M3 guy, when trying to catch up to the Z, said that he would catch-up (and he did) by just braking in the turns. Unless I'm mistaken. But hearing him say something like that kinda implies that the heel-toe technique might not be the best, even though I like it!
Those guys can heel-toe it with their small feet but I use the one foot-roll technique myself.

xenonk

^ most people would roll their foot over to the throttle for the blip.

It should be something that is practice, and being smooth and knowing what you are doing to the car will make the car last longer. I dunno what it cost to change or fix a tranny from drop clutches and other clutch abuse, but I am guessing it's not cheap as replacing a set of brake pads.

BENSIN

WTF are the following and how are they done?

Heel to Toe

Rev Matching

Granny Shifting

Popping the clutch

Is there any one that's willing to help out on this stuff? If I knew what any of this stuff was I'd type it up, but I'm noob. I read the 'Hell to Toe' thread and I still have no clue what the hell it is or how to do it because of other terms in there, 'blip' 'match the revs' 'e=mc²'...seriously, help out some fellow Z lovers.

If any one else is confuzzled on any other terms feel free to add them.

OutsiderZ5

iTrader: (1)

Best video I've seen for what heel - toe is. Watch the racers feet. http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=350z+m3+s2000
Rev Matching - when shifting (mainly down shifting) "rev" (give it some gas) your engine to the point that the RPM's are equivalent to the RPM level on the previous gear you were just in.
Granny Shifting - exactly what it means (slow pathetic shifting)
Popping the clutch - when shifting, instead of following the clutch up with your foot (riding the clutch back to rest position) when shifting, just let your foot off of the clutch. And it will "pop" back to the rest position. . . . . Make sure your leg isn't in the way when you move it off the clutch, lol!

someone else may understand those concepts better or differently than me!

xenonk

You can always google this stuff.

Heel-Toe: it's applying the brakes, clutch-in to downshift WHILE rev-matching all in one motion.

Rev Matching: It's done to blip (to just tap the throttle to raise the rpms) the throttle while the clutch is in to downshift for a smoother transition so that you dont chirp the wheels or spin the wheels with uber hp.. it's for the best acceleration when downshifting, if not done correctly, you end up doing shift-lock which slows down the wheels and the tremendous speed difference from the wheels and engine braking can occur or if you still have your foot on the throttle hard, you spin your tires, either way, you are losing grip or lunging the car in the process.

Granny Shifting: A term used for babying the gear shifting process (which isnt a bad thing).. everything is done slow and one thing at a time. It's also a ricer way of saying that you suck in shifting.

Popping the clutch (aka side-step): It's when you just let off the clutch really fast, also known as part of clutch kicking.. this is how you can start a burn out if you have a good strong clamping clutch. It's a way to make the tires spin.. If not done correctly, your car will buck and stall out.. it's similar to people learning how to drive a stick.. either they burn the clutch or stall out because they are letting out the clutch too fast.. popping the clutch is the same way, you let out the clutch as fast as possible.

Another technique that I bet very few people do hear is clutchless shifting and O'Neil shifting.

Clutchless shifting is done with understanding your synchros in your tranny and knowing how to perfectly rev match to the point where you can shift the gears without needing to push in the clutch. "is it bad?" if you do it wrong and rev-match wrong you will grind the gears

O'Neil shifting is also clutchless shifting, but instead, you are doing left-foot braking while rev-matching with the right foot.. it's a rally technique that I doubt anyone here does (maybe like 2% of people).. I practice it once in awhile to learn how to trail brake and get the car to always have power to the wheels. It's something to learn to become a better driver.

xenonk

Here's my video of my footwork with rev-matching on my WRX and heel toe (so excuse my hairy legs).. I'll try to post better video of heel-toe and all the other techniques later this year and put it all on video for people to see.

http://evasionoftruth.com/videos/Footwork.wmv

If you need to know more about how to use more advanced techniques, you can just PM me.. I've even drifted AWD and FWDs as well using accel-off and whatever other techniques necessary. It's just fun to have this much car control.

xenonk

Best heel toe technique is to use your big toe or the ball of your foot on the corner of the brake pedal.. this is a good leverage point to know how much more brakes you need during braking (as you can use finer motor skills from your toe than your whole leg to press the brakes). Depending on the car, some cars' pedals are set really wide, so you end up using your toe or ball of your foot as the pivot point to rotate your foot to blip the throttle with your heel.. most good cars in design are closer and allows you to just roll your foot over.

the reason why your braking may be consistent is that you are not braking hard enough and knowing how much to brake.. usually the brake pedals are closer to the driver than the throttle shown here:



when you press the brake pedal far enough, you will soon realize that the brake pedal and gas are at the same level. If you watch my video you will see that sometimes when I hit the brake, I am also pushing the gas at the same time (by accident of course because I got careless).. so I am ready to just heel-toe at any given time when I am on the brakes. Great thing on a turbo car when I do this is that I keep the boost rolling (this is how left foot braking also comes into play for the AWD guys make the car shine).

xenonk

1) Brake
2) clutch-in while still braking
3) when clutch is still in, use right foot's side or heel to blip throttle back up
4) when rpms go up to the desired rpm for the gear that you are about to go into, shift
5) let go of the clutch (which should be fast to where the clutch catches the right rpms)
6) done...

when you do it all correctly, it will feel soo smooth so the point where your passengers thought you were driving an automatic, or better yet, the only hear the motor rev but you are still braking and the car didnt even jolt or lunge from the gear change. Talk about smooth driving.

All of those steps can be done in a matter of less than 1/2 second.

Granger968

I just bought a 350Z Track. Previous cars were 92 jetta, 93 impreza and 2003 Mazdaspeed protege. My Z is the first car that I have with pedals too far apart to heel-toe properly. It can be done, but the gap between the pedals is quite wide and I wouldn't want the bad surprise of having my foot slip from the brake pedal while trying to blip the throttle.

Have any of you guys put change your pedals for wider ones? How wide are the Nismo pedals?

Thanks!