andrewhake

I have the fastest heel in the west.

Perfect is entirely relative while you are actually driving. Sometimes the perfect downshift is slightly more or less revs than the ideal perfect engine/drivetrain match so you can get the car to behave in a certain way or as a reaction to varied conditions.

I have plenty of moments where I don't hit the ideal mark on downshifts, but I am not really thinking about downshifting while I do it. More often than not I can be right on the money every time, whether I am at the track, in the mountains, or just cruising slowly through traffic. I think it is way trickier actually to perform a close to perfect downshift in normal traffic than it is at speed actually, you have to be much more precise with your timing and the throttle blip to getting a seamless downshift. At speed you can usually get away with a more standard and consistent blip and shift down smoothly. So heel-toeing down quickly actually makes the entire process much more seamless really, where under normal circumstances the whole process needs to be slowed down.

CKit

I challenge you to heel toe in the rain during regular street driving with full race pads.

Breathe on brake = ABS.

It's not a skill thing. There are some situations where the differential of brake depression / aggressivity makes it untenable. This thread is not about how great driver A or driver B is at heel toeing. It's about auto-blip electronics.

Guys, don't make this your own personal soapbox about how awesome you are at heel toeing. He wasn't asking for heel-toe advice. Just showcasing some technology (that already is in Porsches and Nissans).

josh7owens

To bad it's not STR legal or of order one. I heel toe just fine, just why not has something do it for me consistently every single time

Gernby

Sorry I missed all the conversation yesterday, but my day job is killing me ...

I've never understood why some people view the ability to heel-toe like a merit badge. Truth is that I've never considered it as important as many of the other things I needed learn or practice. If I was at the track every weekend, then I guess I might have enough seat time to master everything. However, with the amount of seat time I get now, mastering heel-toe downshifting would probably #10 on my list.

Another thing I believe about people that do heel-toe is that they probably wind up relying on their ABS systems much more than they would if they did NOT heel-toe. If so, then they are relying on electronics just as I am. A real "purist" would turn off the ABS system at the track. Of course, I have no interest in being a purist. I'd rather drive an F1 car with all the latest technology. Speaking of F1 ... would you criticize an F1 driver because he uses paddles?

There were some good points above about the need for different blips for different situations. It's true that the AUTO-BLiP won't do that, but the perfect consistency of the blip does make it predictable. If you want to use the engine to induce a bit of oversteer, you can just delay clutch release a bit longer. I'm not sure how effective it would be on track, but you could also clutch in before hitting the brake, so that the AUTO-BLiP would do nothing. The AUTO-BLiP only blips if the brake engages before the clutch.

Regarding AUTO-BLiPs legality in some classes, I would be really surprised if it was not legal in STR. The rules do allow piggy-back computers to alter sensor readings, which is all this does. The AUTO-BLiP does not control anything directly.

Here is a video I did right after installing the AUTO-BLiP. If you go to 1:08, you'll see a great 4-3-2 downshift while threshold breaking in a straight line.

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZE-fUQYyLQ4[/media]

captain_pants

I'm surprised they didn't also tap into the RPM and VSS signals. Then they could guarantee an exact RPM match for the next gear, rather than just a fairly random pulse on the gas pedal. The only issue would be if someone skipped gears.

I'd try this. I enjoy the challenge of rev-matching, but this could be neat and allow more focus to be spent on braking well.

josh7owens

Grenby,

It's a bit of a gray area that can be gotten around if someone really wanted to. The rules state you can't cut or wire into the factory engine harness to alter engine management. The way around it would be to build a harness extension that's only a couple inches long and tap into the extension wires. Somewhat like what a Vtec controller does but make it a lot more compact! Someone make that harness cheap and i'll buy one, maybe contact boomslang? None the less it's a cool device!

PS- (off topic) If my car gets together Friday it'd be amazing if I can have you do some tuning that day or on Saturday. If not before my race on sunday we can just talk about it next week.

robrob

Bottom line is you're trying to do many things quickly, smoothly, precisely and simultaneously:

1. Apply the perfect amount of brake pedal pressure for the situation.
2. Clutching (release and engagement) quickly and smoothly.
3. Moving the shift lever efficiently to the proper gear.
4. Blipping the throttle the correct amount while maintaining the perfect brake pedal pressure (very difficult and most of us don't).
5. Steering the car.
6. Looking ahead to plan the next move.

With all this going on at high speed with distractions like the idiot dive bombing into the corner beside you you've got to be a colossal ass (or an Andretti) to believe you're braking and blipping is perfect. This auto-blip seems to be pretty freakin' worthwhile.

BoostedE21

I think this is something I need. I can heel-toe in my wrx , but in the S2K the gas pedal is just to low for me to properly do it.
Thanks for posting this

s2000ellier

i can only heel-toe when i am in a heavy braking zone otherwise my heel is no where near level with the gas pedal, i dont know how you people heel-toe street driving unless you are serious articulating your ankles

CKit

Hahaha! I can easily heel-toe in my S2K, but I have to RAISE my contact point to properly heel toe my WRX.