I'm new to the stick and I suck.

I have two contradicting techniques for downshifting. One is coming from an M5 driver with some extensive racing experience. It involves rev matching before the downshift. Another one is from stick drivers, it involves letting the clutch out slowly to achieve a smooth downshift. So, two techniques?

1) Press the clutch, match speed of engine to speed of wheels, downshift, let the clutch out.

2) Press the clutch, downshift, let the clutch out.


It seems that most if not all road racers do the 1st technique, they rev match, and they do it with heal-toe. (http://www.standardshift.com/videos.html)

WTF? Which one do I use?




AL

 

A "true racer" would do both styles.

If you're looking to max out engine braking approaching a curve you'd just release the clutch & let the engine pull you down.

If you're shifting in a technical area you'd rev-match so as not to destabilize chassis loads (in corners etc)

So, the answer is to do both, if you're a racer. Hey you're gonna rebuild the engine/tranny/clutch quite often anyway so no worries. If you're a street driver you should rev-match pretty much all the time in order not to kill your clutch early. Brakes are cheaper than clutches.

 

So hold on. I drove with a dude today, just for him to show me how he does it. He downshifted from 3rd to 2nd, it was 3500 rpm, he downshifted and let the clutch out real nice so that it is smooth. Was that bad? I need some more help on this.


As far as heal-toe goes, how the hell do you put your foot like that on a stang? There is no room.

 

as for your first question: if his car had hands it would have beat the ever loving **** out of him, thats just extra wear on the clutch and friction and heat and all that bad stuff. next question, its not really heal toe as the name implies, its left side of foot/right side of foot. but what i do and what most other people probably do is press the clucth in, shift, and blip the throttle and let go of the clutch. if you need to stop really fast ill just press the clutch in and use the break then shift to whatever gear i need and go from there

 

I thought that was the case, an M5 driver wouldn't lie, it's pretty expensive. I had two professional stick shift drivers telling me you don't rev match. Another one has a modified 5.0 and he doesn't have a clue about rev matching and heal-toe. How retarded! Good thing I only done as they told me today, before that I used to rev match.


When rev matching, I have trouble finding proper rpm to match the speed I'm going at. How you do that?

 

i find with my gearing that if your decelerating and you get to 1500rpms, i can rev it to 2000 while shifting and dumping the clutch, you cant even tell its so smooth, give it a shot