rec.autos.simulators

Left-foot braking

Jan Verschuere

Left-foot braking

by Jan Verschuere » Tue, 04 Dec 2001 10:50:33

Indeed.

Ok, so some people unconnected to this thread are ill-informed as to what,
how and which vehicle... your point being?

Oh dear... anyhow, Tom and Ray seem to be of the opinion, like myself, that
there's not enough to the technique, however badly performed, to geopardise
the reliability of modern passenger car transmissions.

Careful, some of us might decide to expand on our basic understanding and
really take you to the cleaners.

Two things:

1) Porsches use "cone type" synchromesh, which cannot be shifted without
using the clutch, does not benifit from the driver attempting to match the
revs and is a pretty rare at the moment. As for the clutch... I dare you to
show any passenger car clutch suffers less from dragging the engine (which
is being starved of mixture) and flywheel up to road speed than it does from
two applications which are virtually unloaded (the shift into neutral and
then back into gear with matched revs). Clutch cable assemby and return
spring aside, of course.

2) It's more than a little unfair to compare a race tuned Porsche to your
average runabout. I have driven a race tuned Porsche and I can attest it was
a joy to drive/very easy to shift. On the other hand, in my everyday car, I
take pot luck whether or not letting out the clutch will be smooth or
produce a ***/embarrassing jolt. Therefore I double clutch and blip every
non-braking downshift for smoothness sake... I know I don't have to: I can
also blip the throttle as I move the gear level through neutral on a single
clutch application. I just find it easier to time it using double clutch.

My car, my gearbox, my clutch, my perogative. Clear?

Jan.
=---
"Pay attention when I'm talking to you boy!" -Foghorn Leghorn.

Asbj?rn Bj?rnst

Left-foot braking

by Asbj?rn Bj?rnst » Tue, 04 Dec 2001 10:59:27


> 1) Porsches use "cone type" synchromesh, which cannot be shifted without
> using the clutch, does not benifit from the driver attempting to match the
> revs and is a pretty rare at the moment.

Cannot? I've done it on mine. (Never mind the previous story.)

--
  -asbjxrn

Jan Verschuere

Left-foot braking

by Jan Verschuere » Tue, 04 Dec 2001 19:42:11

Could be Asbjorn, as yours is front engined. Too big a generalisation on my
part there. I don't know if current models still use cone type either.

Let me rephrase that to "The Porsches mr. Haywood was most likely talking
about..."

Jan.
=---
"Pay attention when I'm talking to you boy!" -Foghorn Leghorn.

Jonny Hodgso

Left-foot braking

by Jonny Hodgso » Wed, 05 Dec 2001 03:13:01


> I'll just refer the opinion of the Chief Instructor at the Porsche Driving
> Experience and 10 time Endurance race winner Hurley Haywood.
> "The manual gear shifter was easy to shift but felt a bit floppy.
> Double-clutching or heel-and-toeing are not needed to shift down into a
> lower gear - "double-clutching is for truck drivers" said Hurley - the
> six-speed's syncromesh operation is smooth enough to handle quick shifts and
> sudden engine loads."

I presume he was talking about a nice, new, expensive
German car.

My daily driver is a 10-year-old Pug 405.  405 gearboxes
weren't the nicest in the world when they were new, so
120 000 miles later they're pretty ropey.  My gearbox
will *not* give me a downshift into second at any decent
road speed unless I double-declutch it (usually heel'n'toe,
since I tend to be braking at the time).

DDC also makes for a more pleasant shift on (let me see...)
Ford Transit (40 000 - 100 000+ miles); Vauxhall Cavalier
(100 000+ miles); LDV Convoy (~40 000 miles); Peugeot 406
(0 - 80 000 miles) - in fact, I've yet to drive a vehicle
where a well-executed DDC *doesn't* make the shift smoother.

Jonny

Goy Larse

Left-foot braking

by Goy Larse » Thu, 06 Dec 2001 01:45:36

<sigh>

Not once did we mention that modern cars would benefit from double
(de)clutching, we just didn't believe your statement about the same
technique ruining the transmission of said means of transportation

---
"The manual gear shifter was easy to shift but felt a bit floppy.
Double-clutching or heel-and-toeing are not needed to shift down into a
lower gear - "double-clutching is for truck drivers" said Hurley - the
six-speed's syncromesh operation is smooth enough to handle quick shifts
and
sudden engine loads."

http://www.canadiandriver.com/articles/gw/911.htm
---

Nothing in there that supports your claim

---
http://forums.caranddriver.com/ubb/Forum4/HTML/000297.html
---

Err.....ok, still nothing really, cept to prove there are all kinds of
people out there

---
http://cartalk.cars.com/Columns/Archive/1996/December/11.html
---

Says nothing about abusing syncros, just that it isn't really needed,
but we all knew that before

So basically you've told us that it's not needed to do so, that modern
cars don't benefit from it, we knew that already, what we didn't believe
was your claim that that people who are double (de)clutching are ruining
their transmissions, so I guess I'm one of those knuckleheads that would
benefit from your vastly superior knowledge about modern mechanical
transmissions

Beers and cheers
(uncle) Goy

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