JSolo

iTrader: (14)

I won't get into a mpg discussion with telcoman. He knows best, especially with respect to the type of fuel to run in this car

Even if you can get each downshift revmatched just right, it's still more wear and tear on the driveline than just using the brakes. My school of thought - throttle is for accelerating, brakes are for slowing down. Engine braking used in conjunction with the above is useful for controlling speed when going down hill. For normal driving, good old defensive driving and reading the lights ahead of time works well too. Around here, I may downshift a gear or two, but usually by the time I get to 3rd or 4th, I'll likely be coming to a stop anyways. Use the brakes.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter what we say here. Do whatever works best for you.

Fantality4

Thanks everyone for the help.

I'm kind of frustrated right now. It's been about 2 weeks now since I've been driving this car and I still can't operate it smoothly. Sigh...

Wait, I can go that high without damaging the car? I don't know why but this whole time I thought high rpm was bad.

I don't know anything about manual. Actually, I don't know that much about cars in general. For some reason I was thinking this whole time that each gear shift had to be done at a certain point to avoid my car jerking. For example, what I said before, gear 2 at 1500, 3 at 1800, etc. I didn't know gears could be shifted at any RPM. So I can drive in 3rd gear, go up to 4000 rpm, and then shift to 4th at 4000 rpm?

This whole time, I was shifting like this:
gear 3, go up to 3k rpm, clutch in gas off, shift to 4th when the rpm dropped to 2k. In 4th, go up to 3k again, cluthc in gas off, shift to 5th when the rpm dropped to 2.2k. In 5th, go up to 3k, clutch in gas off, shift to 6th when the rpm dropped to 2.5k.

But from what I've seen, it looks like people are implying I don't have to do this? That I can shift at any RPM for any gear? I feel so dumb and confused right now.



As for the downshifting to a stop vs neutral + braking to a stop discussion... I'll save it for later when I'm a better manual driver. I can't even upshift properly right now.

ctng37

Revving the car higher would not necessary blow up the car. That being said, you should not redline the car too often.

When I drive, I typically shift at 3k in each gear until I reach my desired speed then shift into a higher gear if I want to keep the rpms lower. What you should do is once you rev up to let's say 3k, you fully depress the clutch, change gears, then release the clutch. You do not need to wait for the rpms to drop before you shift into the next gear. Basically shift as soon as you fully depress the clutch. Starting off smooth takes practice. A tip for smoother shifts between gears is to keep the clutch at the bite or friction point for a bit and then release all the way instead of fully releasing the clutch as soon as you're in gear.

Epiphany

They're a bit long, but watching this series of videos might help show you all the proper techniques and a good foundation for how everything works.

Fantality4

So this is the whine noise I talked about before.

Vocaroo | Voice message

It is much more clear than you hear from Vocaroo but for some reason when I uploaded the file on Vocaroo everything got much more dull, road noise got louder, and the whine noise became smaller and less distinguishable.

During the recording, I'm just doing a circle in my neighborhood going at around 20mph in 3rd gear and hitting about 1500 rpm. I believe this whine noise is there for the gears 1-3 and disappears for 4-6.

Fantality4

So is that noise normal?

ctng37

I don't recall hearing that noise in my car. Dunno what it can be. Maybe someone else can chime in. The transmission in these cars is pretty noisy, though.