Originally Posted by scarab944

Once you get comfortable with the basics, try varying the rpm ranges of the shifts. For instance, if you are comfortable heel/toe shifting on a Sunday drive, you might get tripped-up using the technique at a race track. E.g. throttle characteristics when slowing on the street from 3rd gear to 2nd gear in a turn will be different than on a racetrack from the top of 4th gear to the middle of 2nd gear into Turn 1.

Originally Posted by MATT@WORKS

There are many differences between what people say about heal toe, but in general, this is how its done, and how I do it:

First off, you should already have a really good feel for the brakes at threshold and how the car reacts to blips for downshifting. Be an expert at rev-matching and threshold braking before you try to combine the two with one foot!

My problem was when I first started I thought too much about the same foot doing two tasks and got bound up. If you think a little more fluidly, the problem goes away. Eventually your brain simply sees the 3 tasks it has to complete and in how much time and your feet do them however necessary.

So under hard braking, I usually have my foot almost upright, as if I wasn't going to heal toe and was just braking as usual. I then rotate my heal out keeping the ball of my foot and maybe 3 toes still putting pressure on the brake pedal. The ideal is to change the angle of your ankle without changing the pressure on the pedal-- this is extremely important while threshold braking in a car with no ABS. Clutch in, and blip. It takes some practice, but basically you want to clip the accelerator with the end of your heal. You don't want to hit it with much more than the very end of the heal so that you're not getting any feedback from the accelerator, you want all the pedal feel to come from the brakes. The angle of your foot depends on how close the pedals are and where the transmission tunnel sits compared to the accelerator. Sometimes you don't use much angle at all and its no longer heal toe but left side/right side [of foot].

This is where you gear down. This is something you DON'T want to rush, especially on an Evo. People get so bound up kicking pedals that they jam the next gear in and snap off the clutch. That's not right and why trannies go out so often on cars driven "spiritedly". Again, practice feeling out the synchros without involving the brake and try to replicate that while heal-toe-ing. It might be worth it to go practice concentrating JUST on the downshift and making the brakes a little rougher until you can manage shifting delicately.

Anyway, on clutch out, the rev-match should have made NO difference in longitudinal acceleration (or deceleration in this case)-- no jerking or bucking and no lunging. This is VERY important. You can really botch a braking zone if you misplace a clutch-out or rev-match. The Evo's have it easy because all four wheels are being powered, but imagine you have a nice well balanced RWD car and you slip the clutch out and lock the rear wheels while at threshold braking on all four... its a mess.

Practice Practice Practice in many different cars-- as many as you can get your hands (and feet) on. They are ALL different, even in the same make. As you get more experienced, you can usually start to increase your learning curve and get better faster at learning cars.

There... that detailed enough for you?

Originally Posted by MATT@WORKS

Here, not trying to toot my own horn, but this is heal-toe in a STOCK H-PATTERN BMW. It has a light clutch and flywheel, but you can see what's possible with practice and how fast you can be, even smoothly, if you get the hang of it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAO-R7x1Vbo

P.S. Ignore how loose the car is... it was scary.

Originally Posted by MATT@WORKS

Lol... I smell a liiiiittle bit of sarcasm, but its actually just a stock E36 M3 transmission with some nice oil in it and a SUPER light weight Tilton clutch and flywheel. I LOVE it. People have asked if I have a sequential gearbox and they can't believe its a stock part.

Thanks though (?)