Turning corners with stick shift

Yes, engine braking (compression braking) uses the compression of the engine to slow you down rather then the external force of the brakes. The easiest way to understand it is just to do it. When you want to slow down down shift to the next lower gear without using any gas. You will notice that the engine force slows down the truck faster then if you were just coasting in neutral. As you slow down further keep downshifting to lower gears. You will still need to supplement with your brakes but not as much.

Compression braking has many benefits. One is that you save wear and tear on your brakes because you don't have to push on them as hard to slow down. You will notice the side benefits of saving fuel because you let off the gas sooner as well a increasing your personal safety because you will be more aware of the road and you will be looking further ahead because you will be used to reacting early to things like changing lights rather then just hammering on the brakes at the last minute.

These are the reasons why I hate autos. Generally people are a lot less aware of the environment around them when they drive autos as you aren't thinking about it as often. 95 percent of this process will become instinctual as whether you are concentrating on it or not part of your brain will always be listening to the revs of the engine, feeling the contact with the road surface, and looking well ahead for anything coming up.

Driving a manual transmission properly takes more time to learn then just jumping in an automatic but once you get it down you will wonder how people can stand to drive autos. I drive a standard in city traffic everyday and wouldn't spend money on anything else. ...Given a high quality manual tranny of course. Domestics are such crap that it is no wonder everyone drives autos.

 

Very true! My '99 Nissan Altima (5-speed maunal) has over 150K miles on the ORIGINAL brakes!!! Now, the vast majority of those miles are highway miles from my 80-mile daily round-trip commute, but still! 10 years and 150K miles on the original brakes! I'm not complaining. Also... the transmission still shifts as good as the day I bought it, so downshifting definitely hasn't hurt anything. I always rev-match to keep everything as smooth as possible though.

I just handed it down to my 16-yr-old daughter, so if it survives THAT I'll really be impressed!

Oh... engine braking is nothing more than letting the drag of the engine compression (with no throttle) slow the vehicle down. Especially when you're in a lower gear than you'd typically be in at any given speed. For example, when slowing down... downshift from 5th to 4th, let the engine slow you down until it's near idle speed, then shift down to 3rd & repeat, then 2nd, etc.

 

i'm a little confused on rev-matching. when downshifting, is it required to rev-match? why would we give more gas when we are trying to slow down? can you just ease off the clutch slowly and not add gas?

 

Again... this would be MUCH easier to demonstrate in person than to try to describe in text, but I'll try.

Rev-matching is just reving the ENGINE up to the speed that it will be at after a shift from a higher gear to a lower one (like from 3rd to 2nd) - while maintaining the same vehicle speed - BEFORE you actually shift to the lower gear. That way, there is much less stress on the transmission and less (no) wear on the clutch.

For example, Say you're in 3rd gear doing 35 MPH at about 2000 RPMs and you're about to downshift to 2nd before a turn. You know (just from experience) that after you shift down to 2nd while still doing 35 MPH, the engine speed will be about 3000 RPMs. So, before you downshift, you push in the clutch, and blip the throttle to rev the engine to 3000 RPMs and THEN shift to 2nd and ease out on the clutch (all this happens at roughly the same time after you get the hang of it). If you've estimated the engine speed correctly, the downshift is perfectly smooth... not jerky at all. It sounds more complicated than it is... and comes with practice/experience.

Make sense?

 

thanks, rev-matching makes sense now. do i use it for EVERY downshift? i thought downshift is just the clutch and brake pedals. now we have to use all 3 (gas too) to downshift? I'm not sure to use the brake or gas pedal while downshifting with rev-match.

 

Yes, I rev-match every downshift... *BUT*, it's not necessary to downshift every time you're coming to a complete stop. Sometimes when approaching a stop sign or red light, I'll just leave it in whatever gear I'm in and coast (clutch out and foot off the gas) toward the stop sign/light - letting the engine slow me down and using the brakes as needed. When the engine reaches idle speed, I push in the clutch and complete the stop with the brakes. Other times in this scenario I'll downshift a gear or two (and rev-match) along the way while slowing... it just depends on how fast I'm going, and how soon I'll need to stop. If you have to stop suddenly, obviously, you don't do any of this... just push in the clutch and nail the brakes. It's just another one of those things you develop a feel for that you eventually do without thinking about. Don't over-think it right now... just get out and get some practice. Be careful that you don't get so focused on downshifting & rev-matching that you blow through an intersection or stop sign or something like that. When in doubt, forget about downshifting and just use your brakes until you get the hang of it.

 

Engine braking is using the engine to help slow the vehicle.
When slowing down in a higher gear, you can downshift to the next lower gear, as you let out on the clutch, the engines RPMs will increase, but will slow you down...engine braking.
Do this when going down hill to prevent wear on the brakes.

 

No, downshifting as you describe is hard on the clutch and drive-line. This is because you are not slowing down as soon as you should be so when you release the clutch there is a sudden shock to the drive-line as the tranny/drive-line tries to match the RPM of the engine.

Syncros act as clutches that work to match the speed of the gears in the tranny as you shift. The faster you shift the less time these little clutches have to do their job and the harder they have to work. Short throw shifters make for faster shifts but do so typically at the expense of the syncros. A couple ways to reduce the wear on the syncros is to a.) shift slower or b.) double-clutch.

Double clutching is similar to rev-matching except that instead of trying to match the engine and tranny speeds you are trying to match the speeds of the gears in the transmission.

I did a little searching and here is one of the better explanations I found.
http://www.boostaholic.com/revmatching.html

 

Yep... I thought about bringing up double-clutching earlier, but figured we had already given bluejays enough to think about.

But... since you brought it up, I'll add that double-clutching is real handy when trying to downshift to 1st. That's really the only time I use it - and not very often then - because I rarely feel the need to downshift to first. By the time you're going that slow, you might as well just use the brakes to stop. However there are rare occasions when you want to shift down to 1st and continue crawling along rather than stopping - as in stop & go traffic.

If you are carrying any speed at all and try to go into 1st WITHOUT double-clutching, it's tough. You get a lot of resistance and you can hear the syncros whining trying to get the appropriate gear spun up to speed to allow the shift. It just feels like you're straining things - and you are (syncros). If you double-clutch and then shift to 1st (shift to neutral, let the clutch out (still in neutral), rev the engine the same way you do when rev-matching, push the clutch in, and THEN shift to 1st)... you'll find that it pops right in without any resistance at all - and doesn't wear that syncro.

 

Yup double clutching is a little off topic. I only brought it up because it was in the article. I learned to rev match driving a rig and on those, because they don't have syncros, you have drive as such. You can effectively skip the second clutch depression if you want because it really isn't needed if you rev match correctly. I was taught to drive like this:

Depress clutch - tranny to neutral - release clutch - increase rpm to rev match - down shift.

When your rev match just perfectly the gear will just slip in no problem.

 

i wanted to ask another question on rev-matching. it says to go:
clutch in - neutral - rev match - shift to lower gear - clutch out

In the last step while letting the clutch out, do you apply gas as well? or do you just take your foot right off the clutch?

 

Technically we have to downshift unless you wanna coast in nuetral until you reach a stop. I mean you can go from 4 to 2 when the speed alows it.

 

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Just ease out on the clutch. If you did the rev-match step correctly, the engine speed (revs) will already be where it should be for that gear, so there's no need to give it any more gas... just let the clutch out. If you reved too high, you'll feel the truck lurch forward a little and they'll drop to where they should be for that gear at that speed. If you didn't rev enough, you'll feel the truck drag (like you tapped the brakes) as the transmission speeds the engine up. If you did it just right, you won't feel a thing and they'll stay right where you had them. You'll get a feel for it with time.

 

Hi Raven, thank you for all your help. I wanted to ask you one last question when shifting into any gear from neutral. Say I was at 4th gear, and I put it into neutral, slow down to the speed of 2nd gear and put it into 2nd. While it is in neutral, do I still have to rev-match before I go to the 2nd gear? Or do I just switch the lever to the gear without doing anything? Is rev-matching required here or only for downshifting?

 

No problem man... glad to help.

Going from neutral to a lower gear is really the same as going from a higher gear to a lower one - except that the engine will be at idle speed, so rev-matching probably helps even more if you do it. Rev-matching is never really "required". A good idea maybe, but not required. It just makes things smoother when you release the clutch and it takes some stress/wear off the clutch & transmission.

Say you're coasting along at 40 MPH in neutral and the engine is idling. You push the clutch in, shift to 2nd gear, then you can either:

A) Just let the clutch out. It'll feel sort of like hitting the brakes while the transmission forces the engine up to speed.

B) Blip the throttle to get the revs up to 2-3K RPM's (rev match) and then let the clutch out. It should be smooth... no lunging forward or abruptly slowing down. No clutch wear or stress on the tranny.

...and then of course the truck will continue to slow down normally until you give it some gas.

If you slow down to like 15-20 MPH (I'm guessing that's about the speed the truck would be going in 2nd gear with the engine idling), then you could just put it in 2nd and let the clutch out. You have still effectively rev-matched (to engine idle-speed). However, if you try to accelerate from idle-speed in 2nd gear (or any higher gear), you'll "lug" the engine - which is also not a great idea.