04-26-2014, 11:49 AM
Agreed...if I'm downshifting multiple gears, I try to stretch out the process such that I'm in a good gear for the speed I'm traveling, should I need to accelerate for some reason. As others said, I rarely have issues w/ the transmission not wanting to move down through the gears in that situation. I also feel like there's a small safety benefit in that using the brakes more makes it more likely that vehicles behind will realize I'm slowing down (of course, you could just drag a brake to get the same effect).
Ferret...not discounting your experience; clearly clutch wear hasn't been a problem for you. But what do you mean, "if the clutch is engaged, it's fully engaged, you won't wear it out"? That's certainly true...but how are you keeping the clutch fully engaged while downshifting into each gear? Is there such a thing as clutchless downshifting? I know people often upshift that way, but I've never heard of it going the other direction (not that that means much).
If not, then each time you downshift into a new gear, you're disengaging the clutch (i.e., pulling the lever), changing the gear, and then re-engaging the clutch (i.e., letting out the lever, preferably while rev-matching with the throttle)--right? Which means that going into each gear there's a full cycle of the clutch, with some (preferably small) amount of slippage each time. That's what I was talking about when I said "engaging the clutch in each gear."
Ferret...not discounting your experience; clearly clutch wear hasn't been a problem for you. But what do you mean, "if the clutch is engaged, it's fully engaged, you won't wear it out"? That's certainly true...but how are you keeping the clutch fully engaged while downshifting into each gear? Is there such a thing as clutchless downshifting? I know people often upshift that way, but I've never heard of it going the other direction (not that that means much).
If not, then each time you downshift into a new gear, you're disengaging the clutch (i.e., pulling the lever), changing the gear, and then re-engaging the clutch (i.e., letting out the lever, preferably while rev-matching with the throttle)--right? Which means that going into each gear there's a full cycle of the clutch, with some (preferably small) amount of slippage each time. That's what I was talking about when I said "engaging the clutch in each gear."