Kiwi-S2000

best method by far.

Spies

I change down and release clutch and use engine breaking to slow down, I rev match by blipping before releasing clutch.

Sin_Chase

To be fair it is rare that I skip gears the only case is when I am cruising along in a high gear and need acceleration it's just a case of dropping 2 gears, rev-matching and then flooring it.

Was never aware that syncromesh rings are in use regardless of clutch engagement or not. I find this a little curious as I have never, in all my time of reading theory, putting it into practice so on and so forth read anything about wear or mechanical sympathy on syncro rings.

Perhaps this makes it a little clearer why double declutching is required in sycromeshless vehicles.

Kiwi-S2000

I hope your correcting her on this bad habit.

Coasting before gear selection is not a great thing to be learning, it does nothing for car, when reaching a corner, roundabout and so forth and the learner then selects a gear to high and labours the engine and gear box.

s2konroids

No Colin, i just let her continue and **** up the car

Its a bad habit she's picked up when she's not in the car with the driving instructor, she seems to relax more when in the car with me, though I've told her off about it too.

Though i tend to try and drive economically, but she will be in 3rd when the car's quite happy in 4th at 30mph on a flat road (ie not labouring).

Sin_Chase

I don't ever see a circumstance where I would need change down so many gears in so little time that you would not re-engage the clutch.

Slowing to a stop sees me doing 1 or 2 down shifts as to not labor the engine when I come to a stop or having to depress the clutch early. But with the right anticipation of the road ahead there is still plenty of time between shifts.

/shrug

lower

Slowing down from 50 to what?

My point is that if you are slowing down from 50 to 0 then the minimum wear and tear would occur by leaving the gearbox in whatever gear you are in, let the engine brake until the revs are too low, put the gearbox in neutral and use the brakes to stop you.

That method minimises wear on the gearbox and clutch.

If you are slowing from 50 to 20 and but dont come to a stop the way to minimise wear would be to allow the car to slow from 50 to 20 in whatever gear you were in and then put the gearbox into whatever gear you then want to continue in.

Going down through the gearbox would put slightly more wear on the gears and clutch but TBH honest its so minimal its unlikely you'd notice it.

s2konroids

To 0 mate, but you've answered that.

I've never had to replace a clutch/gearbox in all the cars I've owned so i must be doing something right I'm coming upto ~50k miles in the S (though looking at the history the previous owner had it replaced at the start of the cars life, looks like there was a problem).

Sin_Chase

My mother used to drive Patient Transport Vehicles and they were taught to be mechanically sympathetic. This meant slowing to a stop was slowing in gear and stopping without down shifting.

Unless cruising on a dual carriageway or motorway then I always like to be in the right gear for the right speed and have the power band available, I find it smoother and should I need the power quickly, it's there, without shifting.

At the end of the day unless you have seriously bad shifting techniques and habits I cannot see anything exploding whether you slow in gear or downshift.

lower

The reason you have to double declutch with a syncroless gearbox is that you have to use the engine to match the gear cluster speeds.

The whole point of a gearbox is that it allows different gear clusters to rotate at different speeds by varying the size of the gears or the numbers of teeth, hence allowing differing input and output speeds in the gearbox. If there are differences in rotation speeds between gear clusters then there has to be a mechanism to match those speeds in order to allow the gears to slide into mesh. In a syncroless gearbox you have to delcutch and use the engine to bring the input shaft up to speed to allow the gears to mesh. In a sycnro gearbox each gear cluster has a syncro ring which has a clutch face on that speeds up or slows down the gear cluster to match speeds as it starts to slide into mesh.