Ares is trying to teach you to double-clutch here. If you're a stickshift newbie, ignore him.

Rev-matching: clutch in, shift to lower gear, just before you let the clutch out you blip the gas & increase the engine revs so that you can let out the clutch quickly and smoothly without lurching the car or burning clutch. You need to learn this. If you don't understand, just try it; as soon as you do it right you will understand.

double-clutching: This used to be necessary before there was such thing as synchronizers and may be still necessary on very old, very large trucks. clutch in, shift to neutral, clutch out, blip the gas, clutch in, downshift, clutch out. I may have this slightly wrong; I have been driving a clutch for almost 30 years and have never needed to double-clutch. With modern transmissions I guess it may be desirable in very high-performance applications but I doubt it and will need to be convinced.

 

I think he meant to say, Its the 'stuff' that gets you in trouble.
You'd think I would have learned english after all these years.

 

Nope, you got it right! If you just do a throttle blip with the clutch disengaged you'll be speeding up the engine and not much else. It helps the smoothness of the shift because the engine speed is close to where it needs to be when the clutch is let out and the car doesn't lurch as badly when the clutch is released. By doing the "clutch in, shift to neutral, clutch out" part, you'll be reengaging the engine with the input side of the transmission. The throttle blip will then speed everything up (engine and transmission parts) and the next "clutch in, shift to lower gear, clutch out" sequence will go much more smoothly because all the moving parts will be matching each other more closely. That takes a "lot" of the work off the synchronizers. If you're really pushing the car hard, this is probably a good thing to do. For normal driving, I'm not sure it makes much difference. Modern transmissions are pretty tough.

For myself, I don't really worry about double clutching much. I've not tried it very often and have trouble getting the timing of the "clutch out, throttle blip, clutch in" sequence right. It goes "very" quickly and requires (at least for me) a fair amount of practice which, so far, hasn't been worth the trouble.

FWIW,
Drive Safe,
Steve R.

 

yeah synchros take the place of double clutching typicly. but 1st gear is so high, the synchros have to work alot more. not that they cant do it, but better if they dont have to.

now bonus points to the person that can tell us WTF good ol vin was talkin about in F&F1 about double clutching during a drag race.

 

Vin (or Toretto, actually) was taught by his father who was an old-school drag racer. That crowd double-clutched. I recently re-watched "Bullitt" which has one of the best chase scenes ever filmed and Steve McQueen double-clutches all the way through it. Listen:

1.74MB download:

http://www.extremespeedonline.com/bh...ubleclutch.mpg

 

The correct term is gated. The shifter gates first so that you cannot put it into first gear after a certain speed/gear. Most new, if not all, have this so you cannot blow the f' out of your engine going from say 4th to 1st instead of 4th to 3rd... The Acura RSX is known for having very small shift beds (dunno if that is the word) anyways, I have 2 friends that owned type-s RSX's and both went from 5th to 2nd instead of 5th to 4th, BAM engine is toast... biggest holes I have ever seen. Not even partable...
Be greatful that 1st is gated, your engine lives because of it.

 

That's so 1993... That's what TCS/VDC is for!!

Seriously, you shouldn't stomp on it when it's slick out, but the need to torque it out really slowly in a high gear is pretty much eliminated by the TCS unless you're starting out on a wet sheet of ice.

 

Buub: I've never driven my 350 or any car with TCS on ice. Do you mean that you can actually take off on ice and the TCS just takes over to bring you up to speed without much input from the driver?

 

If you don't have enough traction to move the car, it's not going anywhere regardless of whether or not it's got TCS.

I've got TCS on my main car and I've been stuck on something as rediculous as wet grass. Last time it happened, I got out of the car (in frustration) and forgot to put it in neutral. Not to worry, it sat there with the engine idling and both drive wheels lazily spinning along at what was probably about 10 rpm. A little help from a couple of friends and I was on my way.

So far, I'm not that impressed with TCS. I'm sure it works in some cases but I've not seen it so far!

Drive Safe,
Steve R.

 

Downshift into first, like 8mph or less.

 

The synchros are designed for that, DONT DOWNSHIFT TO FIRST......thats a bad thing
The synchros will not allow you to downshift into first until the rev match is met for that gear

 

Well if you have NO traction, as Intrepid said, it will not be any help. But then again, even four wheel drive won't help if you have NO traction. And yes I've gotten a four-wheel drive Rodeo stuck in snow that was too deep before (held the body up so the wheels couldn't get traction).

But... that is rarely the case just doing normal daily driving. What TCS will do is make sure the power gets to the wheel that has traction. If you have any traction then you will be able to move. If neither rear wheel has any traction at all, like the wet grass thing, then you're stuck. But the same thing could happen in a front-wheel drive car.

You make it sound like that's humiliating because it seems trivial. Wet grass is not trivial. If it's wet enough it can be worse than ice because when you start to chew through the grass you've just made yourself a mud puddle underneath.

I got my old 76 Cougar with positraction stuck that way. It was impossible to get out of the hole I created, even with a tow strap. Had to have a tow truck come winch me out.

 

I typically reserve a first gear downshift for the really tight hairpins at the Gap and in the N. Georgia mountains.....my main reason is to get good power at exit.

It takes practice and you have to know the RPMS at which you can engage first gear.

for my car (Miata) it's around 20mph at 6700 rpm. I was taught at Panos school at Road Atlanta and I, out of habit and fun, use heeltoe downshifting.