I think it would be generally more unsafe (to the car and others) to expect people to sequentially downshift through every gear every time they stopped vs. the off-chance of a moment where you have to accelerate very quickly to avoid something. I mean, there's people on here new enough to driving a manual transmission that are asking very basic questions - to tell them it's absolutely terrible on a transmission to drop to neutral and use the brakes to slow the vehicle down and instead, ask them to introduce their own human error into the equation every time they slow down/stop just so we can have all drivers in the world doing things 100% mechanically correctly, heh. That's like asking everyone to heel-toe every turn driving around city streets and having 5,000 people a year slip on the pedals, jam the gas, jump a median and run into someone else.


For what it's worth, in 12 years and about 165,000 miles of rowing my own gears, I've only driven on the original transmission and clutch in the cars I've owned. About 50,000 of those were with a crunchy 1->2 synchro in a high-mileage 2nd generation integra, and about 20,000 were in an RSX Type S where I skip-shifted 2->4 98% of the time (ONLY because the 2->3 synchro on those transmissions was poorly designed - I wouldn't go so far to advocate skip shifting on upshifts unless you have to). I think it's good to keep in mind during a "best practices" discussion like this, the realities of the tolerances of modern equipment. Sometimes sentiments and practices can be a bit overboard - I think someone even suggested double-clutching every upshift in this thread, which is, you know, why we have synchros...

 

It isn't hard, and you *can* skip gears of course...

I certainly didn't intend to suggest that the reason for keeping in gear and clutch engaged was for reliability. The reason is purely for control, so that you *always* have the ability to apply power, instantly.

I *require* this of my students at the track, as do most instructors. It is a *very* good practice to maintain on the street as well, and as mentioned above, in some countries you are practically required to do this in order to get a driver's license. (not in the u.s., though, of course...)

Heel/toe is an order of magnitude more difficult. It is no big deal to downshift from lowish rpm just using the clutch, without heel/toe rev-matching, when you don't need to remain way up in the powerband.

 

It goes both ways - in my time of driving, I've never had to quickly accelerate in such a situation where I was close to coming to a stop to avoid an accident. And for it to truly work successfully in an avoidance situation, I think we'll need to get these folks into something with more low-end torque than a Honda


But again, even though it might be simple for a track driving instructor to do, or even easy for students coming to the track to learn how to drive on a track/coming to such courses in general, I think if you envisioned applying it to all cars with all drivers on all deceleration situations, there would be a fair amount of burned clutches and not nearly as many, but some grenaded engines and/or transmissions all for the avoidance of a situation that likely will never happen.

 

Even aside from accident avoidance, it is just good practice to keep the driveline engaged at all times. It makes it EASIER to drive more smoothly. Every time I'm in a car with someone who lets the car "float" while slowing down, it bugs the hell out of me when they don't smoothly transition between braking/cornering/accelerating due to not being in gear all the time. They have to hang for a second to find the gear before accelerating out of the corner. Poor, poor form on the street, unacceptable at the track.

Any enthusiast should be interested in actually driving WELL, not just getting around.

 

Well said.

 

This myth about skip gear changing being bad for the transmission may be of some advantage in helping ham fisted drivers, who have never driven anything but a slush box auto, to adapt to their first manual. However it is totally unsupportable from an engineering point of view.

If the truth be told, not skip shifting probably leads to more dropping of the clutch, with road speed, but engine slowed to idling, doing more transmission damage than it saves.

First fallacy is the double clutching story. As others have said, there is enough drag in the clutch in modern cars, even when disengaged to speed up the gearbox input shaft in exactly the same way as if it were engaged. A blip, with the clutch depressed is all that is required.

Example; Formula 1 Brabham Repco, at the bottom of conrod straight Bathurst. Road speed 180 MPH, at 9,000RPM in 5Th. I never mucked with going back through the gears when racing, you stop quicker by concentrating on braking. 3700 RPM in 5Th is equal to 9500 in 2Nd. When revs drop to 3700 hit the clutch, & heel throttle simultaneously, & shove it into second, no double clutching required. The Hewland gearbox in the Brabham is a "dog" or crash box. There are no synchros to help. If the revs aren't right it doesn't go into gear. I won the Bathurst 100 in that F1, & still hold an F11 record, so it must have worked.

Now please tell me; Your driving down a country road, behind a caravan doing 50 MPH in a 60 zone, & a moderate, but not huge gap in the oncoming traffic appears. Your acceleration in 6TH would not allow you to pass with an adequate safety margin, but 3Rd or 4Th gear will allow you to pass easily & safely. Are you really going to row your gear box through 5Th & 4Th to get to third, before you start to pass? I certainly hope not. I also hope you're not going to run your engine on high revs, low throttle, for miles in 3Rd waiting for a passing opportunity.

I find a quick blip & a change to third has me pulling around 8500 as I draw alongside the tow car, with 15 to 20 MPH higher speed. At this point I will indicate I am pulling back to my side of the road, as many oncoming drivers get worried if you are on their side of the road as they get to a couple of hundred yards of you, slip into neutral as I pull back in, & into 6Th as the revs come to match. I can't imagine using 4Th or 5Th, unless I wished to continue accelerating.

If anyone has found a memory chip which tells your gearbox what gear it was last in, once you have taken it out of gear, please tell me, so I can remove it. I don't want my car second guessing me, my wife does enough of that.

 

Honda themselves say that skipping gears in the s2000 will compromise the syncros .

So the engineers at Honda probably know what is best for the s2000 Don't you think?

 

Can't find anything about it in my drivers manual. Just who at Honda said it, or did some mechanic at a dealer say it?

 

They know that 85%+ of the people who bought the car wouldn't know how to properly drive a manual clutch/transmission car, and 65% of those will never learn.

The S2000's trans compromises synchro durability for reduced throw length and fantastic feel. S2000 trans is less tolerant of poor technique than most other manual transmissions.

Properly done, the shifter should fall into the desired gate with little effort whether skip-shifting or not.
Fast and furiously slamming from one gear into another with a stiff arm/wrist is not the way.
Doing it wrong:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5df6M...eature=related

Technique is important.

Any doubt at all, don't do it.

 

https://www.s2ki.com/s2000/topic/196...odwork+synchro

FYI Woodwork works for American Honda (not sure if he still does, he hasn't posted in years).

<quote>
My overall objective being in the woodwork is to keep S2000 owners from hurting themselves and hurting their cars. Everytime a transmission or engine gets replaced in an S2000 I get the part. I've seen a lot of damaged transmissions

Added 5-2-03:
Skipping gears:
I have seen many 6th gear sleeves that have been damaged.

The typical story is this: Stop light, 1st gear, engage the clutch, rev to 9,000 RPM, shift quickly to 2nd, rev to 9,000 RPM, same into 3rd, look down and find the car going 80 MPH on a city street and the engine noise is screaming, recognize that any cop is going to write a ticket. Shift to 6th quickly to lower engine noise.

Dragging the mainshaft speed down from 9,000 RPM to 4,000 when going from 3rd to 6th takes time. 6th gear has only a single synchro ring and it doesn't like it. It will grind if you are shifting hard and fast. By shifting hard the synchro ring does not have time to slow down the main-shaft and the sleeve will slip over the synchro and grind the gear. If the sleeve is ground enough in 6th then it will not slide the other way to engage 5th.

So if it is hard to get your car into 5th or 6th it may be because the sleeve is being damaged by skipping gears. Hope this makes sense.
</quote>