For the MT owners: how do you downshift?

[Brice80]

You'd only be heel-toeing in a situation where you want to be in a proper gear coming out of a braking zone. If you're talking about a downshift and pass, just a throttle blip works. You just have to practice metering out your throttle stabs when estimating where the tach will land in a lower gear.

Okay so my goal should be to figure out what the RPM's would be at any given speed in whichever gear I'm shifting into? this "blip" is that literally you just push the throttle to that RPM and let off? or is everyone saying, get it to that RPM and keep revving there until the clutch is all the way out. Or are they the same thing in real time, and I'm just overthinking it.

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[OppoLock]

Okay so my goal should be to figure out what the RPM's would be at any given speed in whichever gear I'm shifting into? this "blip" is that literally you just push the throttle to that RPM and let off? or is everyone saying, get it to that RPM and keep revving there until the clutch is all the way out. Or are they the same thing in real time, and I'm just overthinking it.

You're right with the former; it's literally just a quick prod of the throttle pedal while the clutch is disengaged, no need to hold the throttle. So when you do re-engage it, the engine and transmission aren't abruptly forced to match speeds.

 

[Brice80]

You're right with the former; it's literally just a quick prod of the throttle pedal while the clutch is disengaged, no need to hold the throttle. So when you do re-engage it, the engine and transmission aren't abruptly forced to match speeds.

Okay you're the man. coming up to a stop light or a turn at 40 mph in 5th, push clutch in, blip throttle to 3500 letting off at the same time I let the clutch out?I'll read up on it too, just trying to get some clarity so when I get my exhaust, I'm not that annoying kit revving his engine lookin like a tool..

 

[OppoLock]

Okay you're the man. coming up to a stop light or a turn at 40 mph in 5th, push clutch in, blip throttle to 3500 letting off at the same time I let the clutch out?I'll read up on it too, just trying to get some clarity so when I get my exhaust, I'm not that annoying kit revving his engine lookin like a tool..

Sounds about right to me! Don't think about it too hard, just clutch in, blip, clutch out. :cheers:

 

[Lowrider]

Okay you're the man. coming up to a stop light or a turn at 40 mph in 5th, push clutch in, blip throttle to 3500 letting off at the same time I let the clutch out?I'll read up on it too, just trying to get some clarity so when I get my exhaust, I'm not that annoying kit revving his engine lookin like a tool..

Take sometime and watch this guy...very informative and a good teacher.

[ame]

 

[Brice80]

Take sometime and watch this guy...very informative and a good teacher.

Much appreciated, I'll get to watching that when I get home from work, as my work won't allow youtube :frusty:

hopefully he can help me master the skill, so I can enjoy the manual a bit more.

 

[GT Pony]

Take sometime and watch this guy...very informative and a good teacher.

At 5:03 ... "Six gear produced the most power".

Ummm, not really ... each gear can produce the same power depending on what engine RPM you're at.

Anyway, the video was pretty good overall.

 

[Norm Peterson]

Much appreciated, I'll get to watching that when I get home from work, as my work won't allow youtube :frusty:

hopefully he can help me master the skill, so I can enjoy the manual a bit more.

The best teacher now that you have some idea of what's involved is practice.

A momentary tap on the throttle is all it takes to get the revs up somewhere near where the lower gear needs them to be for no lurching.


Norm

 

[Brice80]

The best teacher now that you have some idea of what's involved is practice.

A momentary tap on the throttle is all it takes to get the revs up somewhere near where the lower gear needs them to be for no lurching.


Norm

Yea I'm going to give it a go on my way home. just need to blip the throttle a bit more I think. I just feel weird revving it to 3500 or something, but if it reduces the lurch I'll do just about anything.

 

[CJ4life]

Yea I'm going to give it a go on my way home. just need to blip the throttle a bit more I think. I just feel weird revving it to 3500 or something, but if it reduces the lurch I'll do just about anything.

How much "blipping" is required really depends on how many gears you're trying to drop. You don't need to go from 1,000 to 3,500 if you're going from like 5th to 4th, You might need to go to 2,000 but thats about it.

Now if you're going from 5th to 3rd you do need to stab the throttle a fair bit more.

 

[GT Pony]

How much "blipping" is required really depends on how many gears you're trying to drop. You don't need to go from 1,000 to 3,500 if you're going from like 5th to 4th, You might need to go to 2,000 but thats about it.

Now if you're going from 5th to 3rd you do need to stab the throttle a fair bit more.

For the MT-82 six speed, if at 60 MPH, there is about a 1000 RPM difference between each gear when in 6th, 5th, 4th and 3rd. At 80 MPH, the difference between those gears is around 1250-1300 RPM.

So if you basically blipped up 1000~1300 RPM when going from 6th to 5th, or 5th to 4th, etc you would be about right on. Bottom line rule of thumb, blip up 1000~1300 RPM for each gear drop. Examples:

If going from 6th to 4th you'd blip ~2000-2500 RPM.
If going from 6th to 3rd you'd blip ~3000-3600 PRM.
If going from 5th to 3rd you'd blip ~2000-2500 RPM

To make it easy to remember, just use 1000 RPM for each gear drop.

 

[Norm Peterson]

I wouldn't focus too much on RPMs. It's nice to know what they need to be, but in practice you shouldn't need to hit them with that much precision.

Actually, you want to kick the revs somewhat above whatever theoretically "perfect" rev-match rpm, lift, and re-engage the clutch as the revs are coming back down. Just like what happens on a normal lift-throttle upshift.


Norm

 

[GT Pony]

^^^ You need to practice a lot to get the muscle memory of the gas pedal to basically increase engine ~1000 RPM for each gear drop down. At first you may have to glance at the tach to try and hit those 1000 RPM increase marks until it becomes second nature through muscle memory. That's all I'm saying, and shooting for ~1000 RPM blips per gear going down is the goal.

 

[mikeyjobu]

Practice rev matching for sure - but the component - the elephant in the room - is the fact that you must also learn to slip the clutch some to avoid lurching. The job of a clutch is to slip. When starting from zero, you slip the clutch to get started - about the same amount (probably more) than doing sequential downshifts. If your going down more than one gear, you'll want to throttle up some. Also, nobody has spoken much about the actual speed of the car, or rate of deceleration. If you're not using brakes and are just lifting to slow down in traffic, you can just hold the clutch in, then as the car continues to slow, select the lower gear with the same amount of throttle as before. It's very relaxed, and is probably slipping the clutch less than if you try to match revs with a blip, and then lift again. I find this really useful when traffic slows on the beltway, and you're not sure if traffic is going to stop, or if it will pick up again.

 

[Norm Peterson]

With practice, you won't intentionally slip the clutch on a rev-matched downshift any more than you would for any normal lift-throttle upshift.


Norm

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