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Originally Posted by Daniel_
I have driven a huge range of manual cars for 19 years, and have NEVER had to double clutch.
Very old cars (pre 1960s) have gearboxes that require you to get the speed of the gearbox to match the speed of the wheels in the gear that you are selecting - to this end one would drop into neutral, use the engine to run the gearbox to the desired speed, depress the clutch and engage the gear you desire.
Synchromesh gears are specially cut so that if you depress the clutch, move the gearstick to the new gear (with the clutch still down) in one smooth movement, the gears engage regardless of the speed that the inside of the box is running.
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But that's my point. Your transmission now has things called synchros in them. They take the speed of the output shaft (the part that goes to the wheels) and match it to the speed of the input shaft (the part that goes to the engine). Doing this puts strain on the synchros, and they wear.
It's true that you no longer HAVE to double clutch (I didn't say you had to) but if you DO double clutch, you save a lot of wear on your synchros, so you won't get that lovely crunching sound when you shift into gear as soon as you would if you downshifted without double clutching.
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Back to the OP - if you step down one gear at a time you will put less stress on the drive chain.
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And again, if you double clutch (which involves rev-matching) it doesn't matter how many gears you go down at a time. As long as you yourself match the engine speed to the tranny speed, you won't be putting any more strain on the transmission with a 3 gear jump than you would with a 1 gear jump.