My step dad tried teaching me how to do it and he is oldschool and i think used to drive Semi's and he has a diesel manual and he downshifts when he is decelerating. Not good.....

 

I think a lot of us downshifts when decelerating/engine brake.

Mike, synchros should last the life time of the car, given that no excessive damage is done to it other than normal wear and tear, right?
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Going down a steeper grade of road, downshifting, coasting very slowly to a lower mph or maintaining speed, 'nuff said.

 

Look, people can do what they want with their car.

Point is, nothing bad will come out of downshifting your car so long as it is done properly with rev matching. Simple as that.

 

revmatching does not prevent wear on your synchros.

Try this.

go 25 mph and revmatch a downshift into 1st and see how easy it is to get into gear.

Now, double clutch into 1st gear and see how easy it is. Case and point.

The G has more than enough torque, and the engine mapping is robust enough that anything over ~650RPM will have no lugging, even at WOT.

As for steeper roads, unless you're coming down a mountain, use the brakes; that's what they're for.


@ UCLA_Bruin: Not known for sure since there's not any 2nd gen G's out there with that many miles, but it should go at least 100k with no issues driven properly. I'd say it should go more than 200k, since my old pathfinder 5MT still had synchros left at 240k miles...

 

Yes you can. Skipping a gear will not do anything to your car. Even going from 4th to 6th (or 3rd to 5th for a five speed) is ok too. You could even go into 3rd at 60ish if you really wanted to

 

Who would be stupid enough to do that in the first place. If you really know how to drive a manual, you wouldn't do that.

Double clutching is a thing of the past since we a synchro's

 

It is an extreme example to show that yes, the synchros are working, when you downshift. Would you normally ever do that? no.

Skipping a gear WILL prematurely wear out the synchros. The higher gear synchros are not designed to compensate for large RPM differences. There is a reason that 2nd gear has the strongest synchros.

I've seen many transmissions NOT get warrantied due to skipping gears.

E.G: redline shifts.

1-2 shift is a ~3000 RPM drop
2-3 shift is a ~2400 RPM drop
3-4 shift is a ~1900 RPM drop
4-5 shift is a ~1400 RPM drop

You get the idea.

DO NOT skip gears without double clutching if you wish for your synchros to last. Better yet, just don't skip gears and you won't have to worry. You drive a 6MT because you like to row gears. If you're too lazy to go up one by one, trade in for an automatic; it'll go up one by one for you.

 

^hahaha
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^ Huh?? double clutching is for like those 18wheeler trucks w/out synchros. Its the act of clutch in, take it out of gear, clutch out, clutch in, put it into gear while revmatching, and clutch out. Completely unnecessary for a car in this day and age.

downshifting is also a very common thing to do, and i have never heard of it wearing out synchros. I skip gears on a daily basis, and i have zero problems what so ever. I always rev match... Maybe what your talking about is FORCING it into gear when it doesn't want to, that may mess things up.

The car should easily slide into gear, and force is not necessary.

 

^

seriously, try my example of doing a 2-1 shift at 25mph.

If you just jam it into gear, it'll go, but if you gently push the shift **** up, you'll hear a whine, and then it'll slip right into gear. The whine is sound of the synchros working.

In fact, for normal street driving, if you gently nudge the shift ****, you'll find every gear has a 'resistance' before slipping in effortlessly. That resistance is the synchro working.

Skipping gears upwards will wear your synchros out FAR more quickly than downshifting.

The wear from downshifting is minimal, the wear from skipping gears is rather significant.


Again, downshifting because you're not coming to a complete stop is proper technique. Downshifting to engine brake/coast to a stop is pointless. The brakes are designed with exactly one purpose in mind: to slow down and stop your car. The engine is made to accelerate your car. Why not use everything for their intended purpose?

 

Why put it in gear when you dont need to in order to slow your speed? Brakes are cheap to replace. I would much rather replace my brakes rather than wear down my clutch and gears because i want to downshift. Truckers downshift because their brakes are not as efficient in stopping their heavy load. Besides, when you coast in neutral, especially in traffic, you consume much less fuel.

 

I agree except I don't think you should ever coast in neutral.
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I dont mean drive in neutral while you are driving on the highway at 70mph. Like when you are in slow moving traffic and you have to decide which gear to drop it into.

 

Yes i understand that, but when i downshift from 2nd into 1st, a simple blip of the throttle to rev match, and the resistance to get it into 1st is very minimal.

I never downshift into 1st anyways, its pointless as 1st is just for take-off. I thought the purpose of a manual transmission is freedom from sequential gear shifts..ie. 2-4, 6-2, whenever you feel like it.

I don't use the engine for braking though. I feel that the time you spend blipping throttle and downshifting could be better spent on just pressing brakes.

Driving along while the car is in neutral is not safe, and i wouldn't recommend it. For slow traffic, i may slip the clutch a little, and then put it back into neutral. If traffic is moving at a slow but steady rate, i'll leave it in 1st and coast along as slow as possible, keeping a considerable distance from the guy in front.