How do YOU shift? (manually)

[CWI]

Depends how agressive I am getting onto a freeway but I usually skip 5th and sometimes 4th. If get to 80 in 3rd and want to set my cruise at 70 something I will just go from 3rd to 6th.

[yellowrs]

Originally Posted by PAUL SS

If I wanted to skip gears I would have an automatic, I never skip gears.

Plus 1

[tom231]

I'm jealous of all you guys. My wife doesn't know how to shift gears, so my car does it for me.

[Hurst]

Originally Posted by PAUL SS

If I wanted to skip gears I would have an automatic, I never skip gears.

+2 Hence the reason I bought a 6-Speed Manual.

[ABMLS3]

I've never skipped a gear.. That might be why I get under 10 mpg

[sspolo]

I need to get a Camaro asap. I currently have a 97 Saturn and when I'm on the freeway doing 60-65 I need to be on 5th. If I were to go down I'm sure that I'd be red lining it. Currently its crazy to even thing that any of you can go from 3rd to 6th on the freeway. Its even crazier to imagine going from 6th to 4th on the freeway! On my little car I'd feel like I'd mess something up bad. :respect:

[ChrisBlair]

Originally Posted by Rob3D

Do you skip gears? Go thru all the gears no matter what? Sometimes, when entering a highway via on ramp, I'm up to higway speed by 2nd or 3rd gear and just go straight to 6th. Even in town I can skip gears (even when I'm not ordered to by the computer)

What are your shift habits and opinions on what's harmless or harmful?

I choose the gear for what I'm doing.

If it means I skip gears, I skip them. If it means I use every gear, I use them. It's completely dependent on the conditions, traffic, road, and speed. The gears are available gears, not required waypoints. Guys who are firm in their belief that skipping gears is for 'an automatic' frankly don't really fully utilize their manual transmissions and might give some thought as to what's going on, engine speed vs gear. I'm sorry but the world of manual transmission driving is not fully revealed to you yet. I wouldn't say "If I wanted an auto, I'd have bought one", I'd instead say: "Why'd you buy a manual if you insist on driving it like an automatic?". You have the power of the gearshift literally in your hand but you ignore it, maybe out of a misunderstanding of what the gearshift lever lets you do.

This is why rev-matching exists. Racers would not like to extend their braking zones, if you want to look at an extreme example. Why would they bother to shift shift shift when they could rev match and shift once. And why would I choose to use 3rd when my rpms in 2nd allow me to shift 2 to 4? Where does the advantage lay in slavishly insisting that I stop at 3rd when I don't need to? I'd be there for 300 rpm.

On my drives, it's usually 3rd that gets skipped, upshifting. On the highway, I sometimes skip 5th. Downshifting, it depends on how much I would need to blip the throttle when I rev match to a lower gear. Rev matching and even heel and toe is not complex once you get the hang of it with a little practice, and the Camaro has enough space between the pedals that I don't mash the gas and brake at the same time (my Pontiac GXP was a horrible car to heel and toe in). Although I'm not a racer, my passengers appreciate the rev-match downshift, and they don't even know why or notice. There's a gas mileage benefit potential as well, on my upshifts: If I am in 2nd, pulling the right rpms for economical cruising in 4th, my gas mileage will suffer if I'm in 3rd so why in hell am I choosing 3rd at all? Actually the notion of being in a gear just because it is numerically the next one is bizarre to me. You guys need to live a little and experiment with your manual trans a little bit, come out of the darkness into the light, the driving is fine. Rigid dogmatic fundamentalism is for hokey religions, not driving a manual transmission. Free yourselves!

As long as the rpms are appropriate for the gear you have selected, skipping a gear or not, it is impossible for the shift to harm anything. By skipping the gear when appropriate, you are removing unnecessary shifts.

I'll take you for a drive sometime, and you can see gear-skipping, up and down, in action. You may start to wonder why you don't do it.

[Ralphdss]

I skip 1st in heavy traffic.

[2011ss/rs]

I row through all 6 every time and that is why I killed the skip shift.

[atma]

well said, ChrisBlair. well said...

[Norm Peterson]

Originally Posted by ChrisBlair

I choose the gear for what I'm doing.

If it means I skip gears, I skip them. If it means I use every gear, I use them. It's completely dependent on the conditions, traffic, road, and speed.

I'm going to add individual driving tendencies to that list. If you're the sort of driver who normally runs 1st and 2nd out further than necessary, then you would end up crowding the rest of the shifts into a small mph range (which would eventually encourage skipping one or more of them). If you're either a bit more patient or somewhat better at judging the necessary speeds in gears, you'll naturally tend to shift out of the lower gears somewhat sooner, which leaves a little more room for the rest.

I think also if you have a lot of either motorcycle or "10 speed" bicycle riding in your background, or 3-speed manual vehicle time at the beginning of your driving career that you're less likely to skip gears in a car. You're more "plugged in" to where the powerplant really wants to operate for whatever conditions exist, and what it would really rather not be forced to do. Right about here is where the specific gear spacing comes in to the picture.

The gears are available gears, not required waypoints. Guys who are firm in their belief that skipping gears is for 'an automatic'

Not sure I'm following this - are you trying to say that automatics skip gears? I realize that some can start up in "2nd", but I am not aware of any other gears that get skipped (even though it would not be difficult these days for a PCM to make it happen)

frankly don't really fully utilize their manual transmissions and might give some thought as to what's going on, engine speed vs gear.

Bingo!!!

I wouldn't say "If I wanted an auto, I'd have bought one", I'd instead say: "Why'd you buy a manual if you insist on driving it like an automatic?".

I see what you're trying to say here, but it could just as easily be asked "Why does an automatic not skip gears if it was really better to do so?". And I'd argue that the intent is to narrow the range of engine rpm to avoid both overrevving relative to conditions or lugging it. Same as what a good MT driver would naturally tend to do when not racing.


FWIW, I find it to be a rather clunky shift motion to go from 2nd to 4th or 1st to 3rd, and skipping two gears (such as 2nd to 5th) to be too big of a jump under virtually all conditions. Not saying I never skip ma gear, just that it's not a very common occurrence.


Norm

[Norm Peterson]

Originally Posted by RickHead

As an ex big truck driver who has logged over a million miles in trucks with ten or more forward gears in a non-synchronized transmission, I can tell you that the only people driving big trucks who did not skip shift were the rookies. Our camaro engines are powerful enough for us to do this, so why not skip if you feel like it? It can handle it. The fewer times you work that clutch, the less wear you put on it.

Really long durability matters a lot more there. Don't know if my son's truck is still on its original clutch at 700,000-ish miles or not, but the expense and the down time for an owner-op hurt a lot more than it does in most personal cars.

I'm not exactly guessing here that even a big ratio jump between gears as when skipping only results in a few hundred rpm change as opposed to 1500 or more that could happen with cars, so you shouldn't be falling as far down the torque curve.

That being said, I'm still kind of shy about starting from a dead stop in 2nd. Just remember, lugging is the enemy.

This ↑↑↑.

It makes me cringe a little just to read the words "lugging the engine" . . . in any vehicle.


Norm

[PeeBee]

Originally Posted by Norm Peterson

I see what you're trying to say here, but it could just as easily be asked "Why does an automatic not skip gears if it was really better to do so?". And I'd argue that the intent is to narrow the range of engine rpm to avoid both overrevving relative to conditions or lugging it. Same as what a good MT driver would naturally tend to do when not racing.

I never skip gears, and try to keep the engine, in normal traffic conditions in an "acceptable" rpm range (2k-3500 rpm, which is more then fast enough for "cruising" along).

Maybe it's not that big an issue with the Camaro to skip gears, but if the car could do everything with a 3/4 speed gearbox, I'd like to think it would have come with one, and not a 6 speed manual.

Other thing I'd like to bring up is, being European, we are probably used to drive both manuals and diesels more than Americans (no pun intended here at all, just stating). Diesels do have a pretty narrow power band compared to petrol engines, so there could be the explanation that most of us "row through all gears" instead of skipping the odd/even ones (what most people seem to do).

And lastly, it's just too much fun on downshifts to try and get absolutely smooth heel/toe and double declutching shifts, which I know is racing techniques, but helps to prevent the clutch from wearing out pretty fast... Becomes such a habit after a while that you do it automatically (which made a few friends chuckle if I was helping them move with a diesel van, and downshifted with the full monty of heel/toe, rev matching and double declutching through all 6 gears) :-)

[i2disturbedSS]

This thread seems wierd to me.
If the conditions allowed it yeah skip a gear to save motion & time ...i.e. gm skip shift hmmm
If not shift normally and not like a dragster at every redlight.

I drove my 99 VW like this all the time and my friends would alwsys ask me how can I skip 3rd and go to 4th or 5th all about rpms...

Or maybe coming to a complete stop. - why would you downshift through all the gears?? Thats weird just put it in neutral.