Hello,
I need advice on how to properly downshift a manual trannie. I am in the process of learning how to drive manual for the past 3 months. I am getting good at it...never stall the car anymore and getting use to driving my car with that mazdaspeed flywheel. What I normall do when I want to pass someone on a two lane highway is first I shift to the gear that I want to use to pass, usually 3rd gear, before I release the clutch I blip the gas to get to the "right" rpm and release the clutch. Once the clutch engage then I step on the gas and pass the other car. Now, that is a two steps process and the car seems to loose momentum a bit. I had tried another way where you slowly release the clutch and let the syncro do the job then I proceed to put on more gas.

How do you guy do it? Thanks for the suggestion.

 

I slama-jama it into second, chirp the tires and honk loundly as I pass them with my obnoxious Borla exhaust, should try it sometime.

Btw, your doing it fine.

 

you are doing exactly what you should do. Spare the stress from the synchros lol

btw how's that MS flywheel, make the car fast4r than stock??

 

I have a question regarding how the clutch feels after a rev match (I don't have an MT, but just curious as I know how to drive them and just wondering about technique). If you do a rev match, do you feel less resistance when slowly letting the clutch back out than if you were to just engine break using the clutch? What I'm trying to figure out is, if you overshoot the ideal rev match point, I would assume you want to let the clutch out a bit more slowly so that you won't get any jerking. But because you've rev matched, can you still let out the clutch faster, with less resistance, than if you hadn't rev matched? Let's say from a 3 -> 2 shift.

 

just let the clutch out normally like you would during an upshift, then adjust by 'feel'

fast or slow, as long as it's smooth, then you're doing it right :D

 

Sweet - try doing what you're already doing, but like this.

Cruising in 6th.
Clutch in, shift to neutral. Clutch out.
Rev up to whatever RPM is correct for 3rd gear at your speed.
Clutch in, shift to 3rd.
Clutch out and get on the gas.

This is the best way to do it to save your syncros. Syncros allow you to shift into gear by aligning your drivetrain and gears. IOW, syncros help you get in gear. Rev-matching and double-clutching may be hard at first, but if you do it right, you won't feel the syncros at all.

 

To be clearer - once you're in gear, the syncros have already done their job, regardless if the clutch is still in.

 

How to double clutch:
3rd is an easy gear to shift into because of the way it almost lines up with mph...

50 mph ~~ 5k rpm
60 mph ~~ 6k rpm

 

but the tach isnt accurate so you still have to "feel" your way some

 

just curious here, but I've heard alot about the rx8 tach not being accuate... how could this be, and how bad is it really off?

 

most car's tach's can be off by 2-300rpms, so probably somewhere in that range for the 8 also?

 

you all are missing the point you want to overrev the engine for the gear you are downshifting into and then put it in gear as it lines up for the correct rpm range, the gearshifter will really easily drop into the gear as the rpms fall, as soon as it starts to go let the clucth out while hitting the gas, and you are off.

you are not going to do jack to save the syncro's unless you are serioulsy downgearing and not blipping the throttle at all. the syncro's are always going to do the work speeding up or slowing down the the transmission irrgardless of what you rev the engine to because if you have the clutch in it is disconnected from the tranny and no matter what rpm the engine is at it wll not affect the speed of the tranny.

 

So just to recap here for a new MT owner, when downshifting, lets say 5->3, clutch in, shift into 3, blip the throttle, release clutch and step on throttle. Am I understanding it right?

As a side question, is there anything harmful about revving the engine while in a gear with the clutch fully depressed? Is this basically the same as being in neutral?

Also, I've heard the term "feathering the clutch" thrown around this forum. What does this mean exactly?

 

always rev-match... that's what I was taught by my uncle when I was 14 and I can't imagine driving anywhere without doing it :D

 

You are almost there, 3rd is probably the best gear to overtake in, at least that's what I found. It seems to have more pull than 2nd (strange as in all my other cars, 2nd did the damage) with a bit more practice, you'll be able to rev match, the "blip the throttle" is half way there anyway so you may as well do it properly. It makes a much smoother change.

 

yes, I have try your method. The difficult part is I have that Mazdaspeed flywheel which cause RPM to drop so quickly and I at times cannot shift quick enough into the lower gear after I blip the gas. I have to go practice some more I guess. Thanks for advice.

 

Thanks all of your guys for advice. They are very helpful. I will have to go out and practice. It is a safer driving if you are using the right gear to pass someone on a two lane highway which is more common here around where I live. The car is new so I want to treat it right from the beginning so that I won't have headache down the road. Safe driving now.

 

I just learn how to drive manual after I have the light flywheel installed. I only drive the car with its stock flywheel for about 1/2 hours or so with the saleman. I never have a chance to feel how fast it rev since I was still have a hard time not to stall the car in 1st gear. I feel that lighter weight flywheel make car rev faster in lower gears so it may somewhat help with acceleation. I put the flywheel there to lessen the stress on the trannie.

 

...and I thought I knew how to drive stick....

What is up with all these terms? Rev match, heal and toe, feathering the clutch, etc????

I can pass people just fine in 6th gear on the highway and if I want to pass them faster I'll use 4th or 5th. I know if you go into 3rd you might be pass faster since you might be in the power band of the Renesis but how often do you need to pass someone so bad (or fast)? Don't get me wrong, most of my driving is in the city and I know that the RX8's 9K limit is something I'm still trying to get use to in terms of passing people but can someone do a write-up on the proper way of shifting a car since based on what I've been reading lately it seems I know less than I thought I did.

What I don't understand is that when I shift you can hardly feel anything (like an auto tranny) so I must be doing something right.

Please explain in detail proper shifting technique...

 

Shift the car, it's a car, you aren't going to hurt it by not double clutching or whatnot. This isn't a 1955 Ford, it's a modern car designed to adapt to many different driving styles so long as your shifting correctly.

 

if you're shifting smoothly without jerking the car back and forth, you're doing fine, all the stuff we're talking about is just extra techniques that improves shifting smoothness. they're nice skills to learn, but not necessary to drive stick smoothly.

just don't ride the clutch (for obvious reasons :D )

 

If you're going to "Drop the Hammer" on this car and you're doing 50MPH (80ish KPH) you can drop it into second gear to get the revs up. In my experience, trying to pick it up from 5000ish RPM you're a ways out of the power band.

Now there could be some arguement in there about multiple shifts actually being detrimental to a smoother acceleration curve seeing that you're not spending much time in second. In my experience, going from highway speeds (70 or 80KPH, 45-50MPH?) and trying to match speed with a car that's accelerating away from you, 4th gear DEFINATELY isn't adequate to the task. Third gear of course does a better job, but if you drop it into 2nd doing 70KPH (45MPH?), you get into third with a lot more power.

If you spot a hole in traffic about to open up, going into 3rd to bring the power on and get the RPMs up to close the gap before the hole opens up, seems to work out well.

 

Isn't this double clutching rather than simple rev matching? Rev matching would be cruising in 6th, clutch in, shift into 3rd, blip throttle, clutch out and get on gas.

 

Yeah, but I thought he said he already sort of rev-matched. My second post looked something like this -

Here's how to do a double clutch rev-matched downshift.
For just a rev-matched downshift, skip the underlined "clutch in/out"

Cruising in 6th.
Clutch in, shift to neutral. Clutch out.
Rev up to whatever RPM is correct for 3rd gear at your speed.
Clutch in, shift to 3rd.
Clutch out and get on the gas.

 

wannahave - ^^ that only leaves heel-toe, which involves rev-matching (with or without double-clutching) while braking.
The only reason to heel-toe is so you have your foot on the gas to match your revs while braking for a turn. But there's plenty on that on the forum here somewhere.