soma

Ok. This is a very very low level question. I recently learned how to drive a manual and I'm not good at all right now. Actually, I'm pretty bad. My first question is how to properly downshift to a stop.

This is what I currently do starting from 5th gear and say 45mph

1. Switch into neatral
2. Clutch pedal back up
3. Brake the rest of the way
4. Come to a stop

Are you supposed to always downshift one gear at a time, brake at each gear until you hit 2nd when you can then shift into neutral and come to a complete stop?

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Psycho Dad

It depends on the situation. What you are doing is fine if it is working. If you need a little extra braking assistance, you can download into a lower gear and use engine breaking to help slow the vehicle. Unless you are making a very quick stop or going down a mountain you likely won't need to do this.

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shakran

no, you don't have to, and you can downshift more than 2 gears at a time. I routinely go from 5th to 2nd if I'm at highway speeds and need to stop quickly, because at 55mph I'm just at redline in 2nd gear. As you get more experience you'll learn how fast the engine will be turning at a given speed in a given gear, which will help you know when and how to downshift.

Unless you need to stop quickly, downshifting is not the best idea unless you've learned how to double clutch, because while downshifting does save wear on your brake pads, it wears out the synchros in the transmission faster, and brake pads are a lot cheaper than synchros.

If you double clutch correctly then you're not damaging the synchros and you can downshift all you want.

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.

Bringing the clutch up slowly whilst adjusting the engine revs carefully will prevent burning the clutch or stalling the engine.

Back to the OP - if you step down one gear at a time you will put less stress on the drive chain.

On a safety note - it can be fatal to leave the car in neutral at speed - you have no option to accellerate out of danger if something bad happens in front of you - for the same reason it can be dangerous to leave the box in 5th and simply depress the clutch as you decellerate using the brakes.

For safety it is best to ensure that the gear lever is engaged for the speed you are travelling at, even if you don't actually re-engage the clutch.

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ratbastid

Also, when you're waiting at a stop, some people leave the car in gear with the clutch engaged (depressed). That's hard on the clutch in the long run. Best to take the car out of gear and hold yourself on the brake.

Some people "slip" the clutch, and use 1st gear to rock in place. Don't do that unless it's a rental car.

RotEx

dont even downshift... theres no point... you might save your brakes a little bit for a longer life but you put wear on your tranny. and create the need to change the fluid sooner. plus unless your really good... it just makes everyone else in the car jerk around and bump around and shake and it uncomfortable :P downshifting is really only for fun IMO

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shakran

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.



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.

politicophile

While you're still getting used to driving a stick, the technique you are using is totally fine. Once you become a bit more adept with your feet, you can progress to heel and toe downshifting. In addition to being extremely engaging, this technique reduces stress on your powertrain and makes for silky-smooth downshifts, even when moving into high rpm's at low gears.

BUT, like I said before, wait until you've gotten pretty good at the basics before you attempt a more complicated technique like this. Forget about double clutching, too: not necessary in a car with synchro-mesh.

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shakran

guys this is not difficult. READ what I wrote. Double clutching is not necessary to shift gears in a car with syncrhomesh. I never said it was. Again, READ. *carefully*. Double clutching reduces wear and tear on the synchros. It's up to you if you want to learn how to do this. If you get rid of your car before 70 or 80 thousand miles, then there's not much point. But if you hold on to 'em longer, or you drive. . . spiritedly, then it's a good technique to learn.

politicophile

Are those numbers related to reality or are they entirely arbitrary? It's not every day that you hear about a manual tranny failing that early in its life cycle.

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shakran

the transmission generally won't FAIL at 70 or 80 unless you really beat the hell out of it, but if you fail to rev match/double clutch when you downshift, the synchros will wear, and at that point will probably be noisy.

Won't effect the driveability until much later, but it's annoying as hell.

blade02

For starting out... I'd just do left foot on the clutch and right foot on the brake and keep it that way until you stop. After a few more weeks of driving, you'll figure out which gears and speeds match up and you can keep the clutch in, but "walk" the shifter through the correct gears, so that if the red light turns green, all you have to do is ease up on the clutch and get on the gas. (practice this a slow speeds first... accidently hitting the wrong gear at a higher speed canpotenionaly cause loss of control... this is why its usually best to leave it in gear while going down a hill)

ngdawg

Ok, I've driven a stick for (ahem) 33 years...what the hell is double-clutching?
There's two basic ways to stop...if you're coming to slowed traffic, downshift-there's no sense hitting the brakes from 100 yards off if traffic is going to start up again. Learn to gauge the traffic speed and flow.
Second, way, clutch in, neutral, brake, clutch out.
Watch your RPM's for shifting, not your speed. 45 in 5th??? Hell, boy, I can do 70 in 3rd!!
Downshifting can be smooth as silk if you know where to do it at-usually a slightly lower speed than the gear goes for. Downshifting to second when doing 45 would not be good...slowing down in 3rd or 4th to about 25, then downshifting, much better.
Practice, practice, practice. Find an empty lot, max your RPM's for the gears, find out what they do.

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Ch'i

The way I slow is kind of weird I guess. I put the clutch down (leaving it down the whole time) and down-shift, with the clutch still out, until I come to a stop and then keep it in first until I start up again.

I NEVER slow down by down-shifting. Its never felt right.

I also double clutch.

Daniel_

I accept your argument about reducing wear on the gearbox, but I've never driven the way you describe, and wonder about the aditional strain that you are placig on the clutch - effectively you ar doubling the number of cycles that it goes through by double clutching every time.

I have no evidence either way, beyond that I have driven many cars for many years, all manual, and ave NEVER had the synchro's on a gearbox fail, but have needed at different times to replace two or three clutches on older cars.

Your comment about getting rid of the car at 70 or 80 thousand miles is interesting - I've had cars with their original engine and geartrain that had done twice this by the time i bought them (as a student, for example). No problems.

My fisrt car was a 20 year old Vauxhall Viva that had a quarter of a million miles on the clock, and was only scrapped when the brakes packed up and it was cheaper to sell it for scrap and buy a replacement than it was to buy a replacement set of callipers and fit them.

__________________

╔═════════════════════════════════════════╗
Overhead, the Albatross hangs motionless upon the air,
And deep beneath the rolling waves,
In labyrinths of Coral Caves,
The Echo of a distant time
Comes willowing across the sand;
And everthing is Green and Submarine
╚═════════════════════════════════════════╝

shakran

double clutching:

you're in first gear, ready to go to second (or vice versa)

Clutch in, start shifting. As the shifter passes through neutral, clutch out, then blip the throttle to match the engine revs to the revs it will be doing in whatever gear you're going to, clutch back in, put it in gear, and clutch back out.

The only clutch component you're wearing on is the spring, which generally lasts a LOT longer than the friction material anyway. Because you're rev matching, you're not really wearing out the friction material because it's not spinning against something that's going a different speed.

If you do this correctly then the only place you're really causing any wear at all on the transmission/clutch is when you're starting out in 1st gear, since you have to slip the clutch a bit there.

btw NG, you can downshift to 2nd at 45 and still be smooth as silk, if you properly match the engine revs to the tranny revs.

In fact, if you wanna be technical about it, if you get good enough at rev matching you can shift without the clutch at all. If the engine is going at EXACTLY the RPM it will be going in the new gear, the shifter will slip right in without needing the clutch. It's a handy trick to know, especially when the clutch cable decides to break on you 50 miles from the middle of nowhere.

A lot of semi drivers do this to save wear on the clutch - that's why when they shift gears as they're getting going you hear a long pause between gears - they're waiting for the engine RPM to drop to that of the new gear.

Note that when you're learning how to do this you're going to crunch the gears a LOT, so do it on a car you don't care about

CaliLivChick

OH SO IMPORTANT!!! Pay attention to this! ^^^

You can engage the clutch as you go along eventually, but Daniel's bit will not only potentially save your ass in an emergency, it will get you into the habit of syncronizing with the car's speed, and then you can engage the clutch to help slow you down.

I have owned my car for over 7 years, and have never had to replace the brakes because I use the transmission to slow me down more than the brakes. I'm getting to the point of needing to replace them now (not trying to thread jack, just doing a small explanation), so don't go freaking out. =)

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ngdawg

I've shifted without a clutch (yep, cable had broken), but I sure wouldn't recommend it. There's a reason there's a clutch pedal. It might save wear on the pedal, it's not great for the tranny if you're just playing.
When starting out driving a clutch, matching 'revs' isn't going to come naturally,( I really don't know about tranny 'revs', I drive by RPM's) hence following the RPM's, attuning yourself to the car's performance and practice, practice practice. I know my car can be driven two different ways: normal or speed-shifting. The speed shifting, for highway driving, allows the gears to go much higher so I can hit about 50 in 2nd before having to shift again to 3rd.
My previous cars, VW's and a Plymouth Colt, had spring-based clutches; my present car, a PT, has a hydraulic clutch-much much smoother, easier on the foot and easier to keep the car still when balancing the clutch and gas on hills, another method he should practice a great deal. Get it right and he won't roll at all.
You know you're doing it all right when a passenger in the car doesn't know until later that you were driving a stick.

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shakran

Nor would I unless you're practicing on a beater or you really know what you're doing. If you match the revs EXACTLY you won't do any damage. The reason there's a clutch pedal is 1) to get started in 1st and 2) because the vast majority of people don't want to learn clutchless shifting because it's rather advanced and, therefore, hard.

Revs=revolutions. It's the same thing as RPM. When you blip the throttle to 4000 RPM because you know that the gear you're shifting into will be at 4,000 RPM at the speed you're going, you're revmatching.



And yes, hydro clutches are nice until you have to bleed the damn thing

politicophile

I'm sorry, I don't understand the difference you are drawing between normal shifting and speed shifting. I also don't understand how your shifting technique can change the maximum speed you can hit in a particular gear. If all you mean is that you have a tendancy to shift at higher RPM's when getting on a highway than when tooling around your neighborhood, then we're in agreement that there are indeed (far, far more than two) "different ways" to shift.

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ngdawg

The car was actually designed to meet local and highway shifting techniques without undue strain. In other words, in local driving conditions, you'd normally go thru the gears at lower rpm's-the car responds and you can't just pounce the gas and wind out the gears to redline. On the other hand, when in highway driving, one usually does pounce the gas-the car responds by allowing maximum speeds in each gear-'performance shifting' they call it. Normal is recommended at 15-1st to 2nd, 25-2nd to 3rd, etc. Performance shifting is recommended at 30-1st to 2nd, 60-2nd to 3rd, 85-3rd to 4th and 5th to 115. It actually fights if one goes from 'normal' to 'performance'.
There are many ways to shift, for sure. These are more along the lines of what the particular car is designed to do (but I've also dragraced it and it's not designed for that!!)

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newtx

Downshifting will save your brakes. Since it has a manual trannny you might as well get the most benefit from it. It just takes a little practice. since you know when to shift, downshifting is just the reverse.

viper11885

Brakes are significantly cheaper to replace than the clutch.

This all depends on the situation though as previous posters have already mentioned.

merkerguitars

Usually when i'm trying to save gas and I know where the stop sign is I pop the car in neutral and slowly coast to a stop. Usually I downshift though in traffic situation. I've rarely double clutch my nissan and yet i have 245k on the original gearbox.

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Deltona Couple

HEY! A thread where my expertise comes into play!...lol. I have been a certified automatic and manual transmission specialist for almost 15 years now. In my career I have replaced well over 3000 clutches, and MAYBE 100 synchronizers. Syncronizers do NOT fail by using them too much. They do WHAT they are designed to do very well, as long as you keep your mainenance up to date. Poor fluid condition will tear up a synchro faster than driving it will. The synchro does one thing, it brings the INPUT shaft quickly up to the equivalent speed of the OUTPUT shaft, allowing the hub to lock the gear to the output shaft. Double clutching or "speed-shifting" will actually damage the synchros faster, unless you are VERY good at it. Otherwise you are forcing the synchro to engage the gear under a load, which is NOT good for it. I would say that your method of driving, Soma, is the best for a beginner driver. Never keep the clutch depressed if you don't need it, because it can slowly wear it out. As far as Daniel's mention of safety, yes, there is merit in his idea, but I believe the concern was for wear and tear. Personally I can go from neutral to ANY gear, and unclutch quite fast if needed.

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Scorps

LMAO...I see so many people going that to there cars, I just shake my head, but then think it probably covered under warrenty.

And when I had a stick, I used to downshift by watching the tach, but then again I drove a 454 BBC with a 4 gear so its a little different, but on hard braking I would clutch neutral and break hard, so its like going from 3rd or 4th to 1st...LOL

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CaliLivChick

Clutches (and all "moving parts") are generally not covered under warranty. That includes brake pads, and all sorts of stuff that are supposed to wear out. I had what I considered a very good warranty when I got my Saturn (and still consider it a good warranty, but it expired), and I had the clutch replaced while the engine was being worked on (saved a bunch on labor), and when the tranny went, it took the new clutch with it... Saturn was nice enough to mark the parts for the new clutch down to their cost, but I still had to pay for it. Warranty wouldn't cover it.

Also, how many rental cars out there are manuals? I've rented vehicles from many different companies, and have never had the option of a stick. =)

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Scorps

Hurtz in town here has like one, and its never there

There is place's in the big cities that might have that option. Like that place in Toronto where you can rent Lambo's, Vipers and all that kinda stuff...

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shakran

Does that not put some form of stress on the synchro? The laws of physics would seem to indicate that it does. . .

Well I think it goes without saying that things only work if you do them right

I'm not sure I get what you're saying here. I can't see how pressing the clutch would create a load on the transmission. It takes the load OFF the transmission - that's what the clutch is for. I'm sure I'm misunderstanding what you're saying.
If you properly double clutch you press the clutch down and shift out of gear. No load on the tranny. You then blip the throttle to match the engine revs to the speed of the gear you're about to go into, and press the clutch again while shifting into that gear. Still no load on the tranny. You let the clutch out with the engine already going the speed it's supposed to be going in that gear. How does that create more load on the transmission than, say, downshifting to 2nd from 50mph by just popping the clutch with no throttle work?

I'm not trying to discredit you here, but your advice goes against the advice of just about every automotive expert out there. The closest I could find are the Car Talk guys, who say it wears on the clutch (by which they mean the clutch spring) more but say nothing about it wearing out the synchros faster.

bodypainter

Here's what I do, FWIW.

I almost never coast in neutral. Instead, I downshift and use the engine to assist with braking. Why do this? Simple, you retain maximum control of your car at all times. If you're coasting along in neutral and of a sudden need power, you're screwed. I prefer to be the master of my equipment and ultimately my own destiny.

I don't skip gears when down (or up) shifting. I will instead go from 5th to 4th to 3rd etc. No double-clutching or heel-toe or whatever, just go through the gears. This reduces wear on the syncros in the long run. At a stoplight I will put the car in neutral and let the clutch out if it's clear I'm going to be sitting for more than a half minute or so.

I'm sure I burn a bit more gas with my method versus coasting to a stop, but that's okay with me.

Deltona Couple

I was assuming (incorrectly) that you were meaning more like speedshifting, which doesn't use the clutch between gears.

Explain specifics on how my advice goes against every auto expert out there? Because everyone that I know, and talk to about it agrees with me.
and no, it doesn't put stress on the synchos, it uses them as properly designed. Otherwise we wouldn't need synchros at all! There are small amounts of wear on the gripping surface of synchros, but again, in my entire career, and after discussing this with another friend of mine who has been doing transmissions for over 20 years, syncros last much longer than you seem to believe. I have seen cars, trucks, and utility vehicles with transmissions having over 200K miles on them, burned out clutches, but the syncros looked as good as new.

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waltert

so basically, your stopping technique is fine. holding the clutch in when unnecessary is hard on the engine, as well as the clutch, so try to avoid it.

shakran

Nope, clutchless shifting does indeed beat the hell out of your transmission unless you do it just right.

Double clutching does not use the synchros as designed because the synchros were designed to do automatically what you are doing manually with the double clutching.

Except for first gear we don't NEED synchros any more than we need traction control. They're just really nice to have.


You must not work on many hondas then, because there are PLENTY of late 80's, early 90's civics running around out there with crunching synchros.

Deltona Couple

Sorry, but I simply disagree with you based on my experience in manual transmission operation.



Again I disagree with you here. Synchros are needed in first gear as well. If you are in neutral, and you have the clutch out, then push the clutch in and try to shift it into first gear, without synchros, it will grind. That is why we HAVE synchros. And if your double-clutching idea works in first, why do it? I mean what is easier, push clutch in once, shift into gear, or double clutch and push into gear?



No, actually I have not worked on many Hondas...I guess that means Honda must build a pretty shitty transmission then...

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bodypainter

I imagine many on this board have never drove a stick shift car so old, but cars didn't used to have synchros in first gear. You had to come to a complete stop to downshift to first.

It sucked.

gal

Stick driving isn't that complicated. You can switch from any gear to another, and you don't have to put it in neutral. Ever. Stopping at a red light, I always have the clutch fully depressed. Holding the clutch in doesn't wear the clutch at all since the discs in the clutch are not in contact.

When you're stopping, just break and clutch at the same time. If you're slowing down to park, put it in first to prevent runaway. If you're slowing down to say 10 mph, you break/clutch, shift to 2nd and release the clutch when you're going slow enough.

BigTruck1956

I drove a pickup for a few years that had an unsynchronized first gear. Once i figured the double clutching out, it was fairly easy to operate. It was still a pain in the ass to go through the motions in order to downshift though.

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Deltona Couple

Sorry to burst your bubble Gal, but it actually DOES wear your clutch some. When you depress your clutch pedal, it DOES release the clutch disc, but since the engine is still spinning the flywheel, and the clutch disc is still in contact with, but not holding, it still does cause a small amount of wear. Read that as SMALL AMOUNT. Insignificant? maybe, but with the pattern of drivers I have met, most of those who hold in their clutches tend to replace them sooner than those that don't hold them.

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cyrnel

Be more concerned about the throwout bearing than clutch material.

Neither are fun to replace.

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shakran

OK. You're wrong, but we'll agree to disagree.




Yes, that would be why I said EXCEPT for first gear we don't need synchros.



Nice try, but I'm gonna call you out here. To be quite frank, an experienced mechanic would realize that moving parts wear. If you put more strain on a moving part it will wear faster. Therefore if you require the synchros to do more work, they will wear faster. If you take work away from the synchros and do it manually, they will wear slower. It doesn't get much simpler than that.