I've had my S for about two weeks now and have been experimenting with the best way to drive it. One thing I noticed was that I was having trouble shifting smoothly. An old trick I learned from riding motorcycles was pre-loading the shifter (putting a little pressure on the shifter before pushing in the clutch, then pushing in the clutch and shifting like normal).

My car shifts a lot smoother when I do this. Does anyone else do this? Do you think it puts a lot of strain on the tranny? Harmful to the car? I'm not talking about a lot of pressure, just a little. I do it on my bike all the time and haven't noticed any problems, but it has a wet clutch.

 

i doubt it'll do any noticeable damage... since you're not putting much force on the shifter...
i dont see a problem with doing it, worst case is that the clutch may wear a very small amount faster than normal.. but nothing significant

 

I don't see how putting pressure on the shifter before pushing the clutch in would have any bearing what so ever on clutch wear. I also don't see how it would make any difference in the shift action....

ron

 

Ron - try it sometime and you'll feel what I'm talking about.

 

It may not put wear on the clutch, but that's not what I'd be concerned about. I'm no mechanical engineer, but it seems like this would not be the best thing for the synchros. Maybe you can get away with this on a motorcycle because of the sequential gears?

 

Back when I was messing around with domestic iron cars, I was warned by several people not to rest my hand on the shifter. The pressure you put on the shifter "partially" engages the next gear, as you are putting pressure on the shift fork inside the trans, which causes the synchro to attemp to match speeds between the gears that enable a shift. This wears the synchro, untill it can no longer do it's intended job, and then you are left with grinding on upshifts/downshifts.

Bike transmissions with shift dogs instead of synchro's are a bit different. I've heard the same bit of advice to preload the shift before pulling the clutch in. These were the same guys that advocated "fanning" or slipping the clutch at high rpm to keep a 2 stroke in the power band.

I was told this by GM and Mopar guys using both BW T-10's and A-833's.

 

Me too!

 

Honda also specifically sez not to do this on the S. I believe it's in the owner's manual...

 

isnt that because of the synchrose(sp) ? it can damage them by resting your hand on the shifter.. too much load force on them or something.. i remember hearing about that..
im not so sure anymore if its ok to do

 

Did you buy the car new or used?
If new - remember you need the tranny fluid warmed up. Take the first few minutes easy.
If used - change the tranny fluid with genuine Honda MTF.