Mike, you are supposed to be his right hand man. What happened? Change of heart?

 

Here you go Matt...

http://www.edmunds.com/ownership/how...2/article.html

 

thank you very much rockitman ... that cleared it all up for me

time to go try the heel and toe

 

Practice with out the car in motion. Sit in your garage for 30 minutes and try and master the technique. After that you will still suck at it but atleast you have the movenets. It takes some time to get used to because its all about timing not movements. You'll need to find the perfect amout of blip-time for each downshift before you master it. Good luck! Let us know how it goes and when you are a Pedal Dancing Master.

 

I've been practicing heel / toe for a couple of years now and am starting to get reasonably comfortable with it. What is double clutching?

Mike

 

You can generally do those 4 simple steps if your RPM is below 3000 and you don't have a need to slow down drastically. The synchros will do a decent job of matching speed while hooking up the gears for you.

You have to resort to the other techniques of heavy brake and rev matching if you want to slow down fast but not entirely stopping and continue on around a corner or something.

Some do double-clutching out of old habits (before synchros came along). It does help preserve the life of the synchros.

Porsche invented and adopted synchros in all its cars long time back to make life easier for the driver. The synchros allow you to skip the double-clutch as long as you match the revs close enough.

I believe the term heel-n-toe came from an era where racecars had the brake pedal to the right of the gas pedal. Hence you'd heel-brake then toe-blip the gas before you complete the shift.

With modern setups, we should really call it ball-n-ball instead. First the left-ball then the right-ball of your foot.

What's really hard to master is to do rapid "heel-n-toe" in succession instead of skipping a gear. You can see some GT drivers do that when they have the footwell cam. They can execute it time and time again within split seconds. You have to be carrying a lot of speed and late-braking to practice that though.

 

Life Dies described the steps of double-clutching perfectly in his first post. Just remember the constant brake pressure part

 

<---- can't heal and toe for the life of me

just another reason I need to be driving a stick daily

 

H&T dbl clutch is fun and it saves your tranny. It is really fun when you are decelerating at the limit from 140 mph and you need to catch a gear or two.

And yes, I still practice constantly.

 

WARNING. Don't do this when there's traffic infront of you. Most beginners will blip the gas for too long and when they declutch, the car will race forward and cause catastrophy.

In a TT, it's best to practice from 4-3 initially. The ratios are just about right. 3-2 means you'll have to blip higher or car will be jerky.

 

double clutching works best at the end of a long straight-away when going from 5th to 2nd for instance. You put the clutch in, pull the car out of gear, let the clutch out, then put the clutch back in and bring the revs up and select the desired lower gear. All this has to be done while under hard braking.

It takes some practice and doesn't really come into play under normal street driving (maybe coming off of a freeway off-ramp). I'm not too good at double clutching myself so I just heel-toe downshift through every gear until I'm in the right gear, but I'm working on it.

 

I should make a video of myself double clutching though the gears to demonstrate the real beauty of it. Maybe I'll work on that later today or tomorra.

 

There is a slight danger in a closely-spaced box like a 6speed when you pause in neutral during double-clutch, you may not be find the right slot to enter again! In the early days my 6speed gets jammed a lot when I do double-clutch. Not a fun situation to be in. The new tranny is much better. It's also much safer to do it in a 4speed or a well-spaced 5speed.

I'd make one slight correction to the sequence that you had described. I'd bring the revs up before I put the clutch back in again.

 

Zamirz. I thought double clutching is when you push the clutch down, take it out of gear, let the clutch back out, rev the engine the right amount for the downshift, immediately push the clutch back in and drop into lower gear and let out the clutch for perfectly smooth downshift equillizing the throttle. That is the way I do it. I believe you were missing one step. Clutch is out when you rev.

 

collin, I agree on all accounts about it being tough to find the right gear. With my 5-speed 911 I find it much easier to find the right cog than with my 6-speed MINI.

with regards to bringing the revs up before putting the clutch in, I've heard conflicting information. I've heard your version and also the way I do it, I thought the important part is to bring the revs up before the car goes into gear so that the transmission output shaft is up to speed before you let out the clutch. I suppose the way you do it prevents excessive wear on the clutch if you happen to take your time bringing the revs up before you put the car in gear.