i know this might sound a bit weird but there was something about the manual that ive never been sure about. i understand how you have to push in the clutch to shiftfrom neutral to a gear, but according to my dad and the way that he drove stick back in the day , thats the only time you had to use it. i let him drive my tc today and i was with him and he didnt push in the clutch when we pulled up to a light. he just took it out of 4th gear. he said thats perfectly okay but i wasnt sure because thats not the way i was taught to drive a stick. he just said make sure you use it when you shift INTO gear but not necessarily out of gear to neutral. can someone please give me some input

 

i dont know that much bout sticks..whenever i drive my frens manual celica i clutch everytime, even when applying the brakes. its suppose to ease up the wear on the gears and stuff. but i was watching nascar today and they were talkin bout how the drivers only use the clutch when downshifting..i never knew that..but yeah, nascar cars are beyond regular street cars so i wouldnt apply that to our cars. jus wanted to mention that

 

oh thats cool thanks though
i think im just gonna stick to the way i learned and use it everytime...i dont know it just feels better

 

well your dad could do that if he timed the rpms of the engine.. and back in the day (depends on how your dad is) you had to time it perfectly.. but today we have what's known as synchronizers. They spin up the gears to match the input shaft's spinning speed, so the gears mesh without grinding.. Not only is it smoother, it saves wear on the gear teeth. I would suggest you not shift your car without using the clutch.. Because if sometime down the road you have transmission problems (for whatever reason) and scion sees that wear, they'll know you were doing what's known as "speed shifting".. and that's abuse according to them..

okay now pulling it out of gear, i would still stop the gears from spinning (this is what you do when you press the clutch in, you stop all movement in the gears to move them around without the chance of "buzzing" or "grinding" them).. I would always press the clutch to the floor anything you're going to go into or out of a gear.. you can pull a gear out like your dad did, I've done it before on my old civic.. But I wouldn't recommend you get into a habit of that..


as far as having to press the clutch in (to the floor) when braking is for the fact that if you need to shift to another gear, you're ready.. usually when I came to a light, i would shift into neutral and not hold the clutch (less wear on the clutch), and have my foot on the brake.. some people will say they will hold the clutch pedal in, just in case they have to acclerate away, but in reality there is always someone in front of me.. if they hit me, won't matter if i have the clutch in or the brake pedal pressed..

for wear sake, i wouldn't hold the clutch in at a light, less time the throwout bearing is spinning, more life (lasts longer).. hope that helps..

 

wow yeah man thanks alot. i never knew about those synchronizer things you were talkin about thats pretty cool, and one more ? what the hell is "double clutching" like you always hear even in F&F movie

 

double clutching is a way to match up the speed of the gears to the engine. All modern cars have synchro's, making double clutching useless. If you do it on a tc, you'll just waste time shifting.

 

I love how the F&F movies make it seem like "Reality".. haha.. not being a snob i just think it's funny how stuff is not reality in that movie.. but then again that's what makes the movie kind of fun..

okay double clutching is what I was mentioning when you match the rpms of the engine to that of the transmission.. let's say you're in 5th gear doing 70mph.. roughly 2500rpms let's say.. you shift to neutral you're doing idle speed in the engine, and the drive shaft is the only thing spinning, since the wheel (right front is the wheel that actually move the car) is moving.. to engage the gear again the idea is to match the rpm's of the engine by getting the rpm's up to the speed of the wheels (2500rpms = 70mph in 5th gear).. and since both the input shaft is matching that of the driveshaft the gear should match and slide right in without having to use the synchronizer..

this is what I was describing what your dad might have had "back in the day" before we got synchronizers that do that "spinning of the gears up to speed" for us. Double clutching doesn't really do much today becuase we have synchronizers that match the input shaft speed with that of the driveshaft and let us slip the gears in for a smooth shift.. F&F movie somehow thinks that if you can match the rpm's you won't have to shift with the clutch.. aka "speed shifting".. so they think that in a street race if they destroy their transmission is more cool. But the fact is, a guy who knows how to use their clutch and quickly shift through gears without ruining the transmission because he didn't match the rpms of the engine to that of the driveshaft..

see how funny it is? All he really had to do was get a short shifter kit and a sport clutch (less distance to go to engage gears) and he would've been quicker on the shifts.. Now I may get people who are kinda of religious about speed shifting but for my experience it takes practice and for me i don't care to practice on a transmission that costs roughly $3000.. so it's fun to watch F&F but it's like the writers of that movie heard the term double clutching and figured they'd slide it into the movie.. notice that they never really explained how that was done in the movie? if you watch the guy's rpms.. you'll see that it was done with a clutch.. because the rpm's didn't stay high, they came back down and went back up..

bottom line? it's a waste of time and if you screw it up, it's not nice to do to your transmission.. always use the clutch..

anyway hope that helps.. others might have more info than I do, but that's what I know

 

okay like mainrodax said.. lol that explanation is more simple than mine.. same results..

 

thanks alot man
thats a lot to write but thanks alot for the explanations.....im really good when it comes to understanding the principles of cars and the way they work but im still unsure about certain things as most people probably are. im still a bit confused about the synchronizers and how they work but i can read up on them somewhere i dont know...and my bad i have one more ? when you down shift. i understand why the car slows down but why do rpms go up without using the gas..?

 

well they go up because it's just like the principle of shifting i explained.. well basically let's say you picked 5th gear.. and you're doing 70mph.. when you shift into 5th gear the gear begins to spin, since it's locked onto the input shaft, it will then in turn spin up the engine (once the clutch is engaged by letting go of the clutch pedal) since they are now mechanically locked..

I picked fifth because it's almost a 1:1 ratio (0.87:1 actually) and it's easier to explain.. if you were to try another gear like 2nd.. you'd see a 1.4:1 ratio.. a multiplier.. if you look at first it's something like 3.8:1 (im guessing what the tC is from memory).. see a gear is just a multiplier of engine torque and when these lower gears are selected they spin faster and higher rpm's are seen in the engine. Then of course there is the differential that also adds what is known as a "final drive ratio" which also multiplies the engine.. see? so it's not just the engine that helps the power on the road, it's also the transmission which puts that power to the wheels.

So the question was why does the rpm's go up when you shift? It's because those gears have to spin up to what the driveshaft is doing, they will in turn spin the engine to whatever rpm they would be turning at that mph you're doing.. so remember what gear you're in and what the maximum allowed speed is for that gear (along with rpms) because you could over-rev your engine if you downshifted into the wrong gear.. that'll wake you up.. lol

hope that helps..

 

alright man
i have a lot of questions but youve said more than enough.. thanks a lot man.... keep in touch and ill let you know how things with my car go...thanks for your input

 

don't concern yourself with synchros, they work behind the scenes and you dont need to worry about 'em. each geaf has a different ratio, for example at 3500 in 1st gear you travel at lets say 15mph (im not being acurate with my numbers, i'm just explaining) and at 3500 rpm in 5th gear you travel at 75, when you down shift into 4th atr that speed the engine shoots up to 4500 becuase of the gear ratio, the force of the car moving at that speed moves your rpms up to where they wanna be.

 

I work with VW's and one of my co workers showed me how he can shift all the way up to 5th in a jetta without touching the clucth , after 1st of course. its pretty cool to see it done

 

Double clutching was explained correctly above. The people who wrote the F&F knew about as much about cars and racing as my grandmothers dog. You do not need to double clutch a synchronized tranny. I have maybe heard one or two people try to tell me otherwise... and I told them both the same thing: Lets race and you double clutch all you want.. I GAURANTEE I will outshift you evrey time

 

I doun't think they ever explained HOW to double clutch though. Great explinations, but to double clutch you would simply engage and then disengage the clutch before going into gear. So in an old car going from 1st to 2nd would be something like this. Engage Clutch and move to nuetral, disengage clutch. Engage Clutch, disengage clutch. Engage Clutch and more into 2nd gear.

The only time you will need to double clutch the tC is when you want reverse gear and the gear is not lined up. (Reverse has no synchro)

I have a co-worker who said he can shift a big rig withoutht ever pushing in the clutch!! He said he wouldn't grind the gears either.

 

One more thing about double clutching....not only is it useless on a synchro'd car, it's putting excess wear on your clutch/throwout bearing, so in reality, it's worse than useless, it's shortening the life expectancy on your clutch/Tob.

 

You'd actually be triple clutching there fabio, which is completely useless. And to set one thing straight, your clutch is always engaged when you're not touching the pedal. When you step on the clutch to shift, you are disengaging the clutch. So in double shifting, you'd would disengage the clutch, shift to neutral, release the clutch (so that it is once again engaged, got it?), disengage the clutch THE SECOND TIME, and shift into the next gear.... (.... ok, you can let go of the clutch now. idiots.)


sciontc_mich, you should be banned for running your mouth when you don't really know what you're talking about. sciontc2006, you can pretty much disregard at least half of what he said. the rest of it was basically just overgeneralized babble.


sciontc2006, about the only thing you should take from these guys is the consensus that no, you don't need to double clutch your car because it has syncros, which helps the transmission sync up (duh) between shifts. oh, and yes, you should be able to shift from first through fifth without a clutch in most cars, because your syncros are being forced to overcompensate for your friend's dumb ___ for not using the clutch. Yes, alot of big rigs do have to be double clutched, and yes, some people can still shift one without the clutch because their either good, full of hot air, or magic like Vin Diesel.

All this crap about stopping the gears in your tranny and stuff is either misinformed or just flat out wrong. Either way, it's all just a bunch of wasted bits on a hard drive in some server and half of these kids should be banned for overcomplicating ____ and trying to confuse a highly impressionable new auto enthusiast.

Listen to Mainrodax, engifineer, and toastbox and you'll be fine.


...stupid noobs.

 

rev-matching however is required right? to save your clutch from slipping???

 

thank you Eric for that long post reviving this completely dead topic that most of the original posters wouldn't care about anymore..

i'll give you props for at least not starting a new thread and having obviously searched to find this one.

 

yanking the gear selector into neutral without cluching is going to trash your syncros. whatever, it's your car