>There should be no "significant" grinding noise at the point where you
>match engine speed to the geartrain (tough to do for more than an
>instant). As long as you don't use more than slight pressure on the
>shifter, you will not be damaging anything even with the gear clash
>sound. Of course that depends a lot, too, on the ***. My old '68
>Chevrolet truck could be shifted without clutching but it was very hard
>to get it right. My '87 Mazda truck simply will not go into gear
>without clutching, though (so far).
It will get easier as soon as the synchromesh rings are worn. :)
For those of you who just want to test the principle of matching
speed, revs and pressure, without killing transmissions, try going
*out* of gear without the clutch. While coasting to a red light, apply
a bit of throttle and try to shift to neutral. You will find that
there's a sweet spot where it is very easy to get out of gear. As a
next step, you simply have to find that same spot when going *into*
gear. Easy, isn't it? :)
BTW, if I understood things correctly, one of the reasons why it is so
difficult to shift a standard gearbox without clutching is this: The
teeth of the gears in 'civilian' gearboxes are tilted (I don't know
what it's called in English - the german word is "schraegverzahnt", as
if that would help anyone... :)
They look like this when viewed from above:
///////
The benefit is that they can transmit more torque and, more
importantly for normal cars, the gears don't sing.
(Old) racing gears have straight teeth:
|||||||
They are more noisy (on some older normal gearboxes, the reverse gear
is built like this. When driving backwards, one hears this annoying
sound) but easier to shift without a clutch or synchromesh.
>> When applying the slight pressure, should I hear a grinding noise or
>not?
--
Wolfgang Preiss \ E-mail copies of replies to this posting are welcome.
