Evo x heel/toe shift help!!!
 

Hello guys
I have been driving evo x for almost 2.5yrs now and this is my first manual car. Everything now feels pretty natural to me except heel/toe shifting. I recently started trying heel/toe and am having a hard time with it.
I feel like the brake and gas pedals are too widely spaced out and also the depth difference between the two pedals are too much (8.5 shoe size).
I realized that I have to brake pretty hard in order to reach and blip the gas enough to rev match; also as I blip the gas, I tend to place more pressure (already braking at this point) on the brake pedal in order to reach the gas pedal which results in more braking than I needed (jerking because of sudden braking).
Because of my lack of skills or improper technique, I find this technique pretty impractiacal especially when daily driving on public roads. I understand when tracking where you apply hard braking, but I just cannot see myself executing heel/toe smoothly when daily driving because of my problems mentioned above.
Any advise, suggestions, or tips would be greatly appreciated. Thanks :)

The pedals are spaced widely in the X, I cant argue there. I picked up a set of pedals from Sullivan Racing Products and they seem to help a bit, it certainly narrowed the gap between the two pedals and made heel toe easier. Wearing a wider shoe helps but unfortunately I haven't found a "wider" driving specific shoe. Being a size 12 I do have a bit more surface area down there to work with anyway.

Ill also agree with the depth difference. It doesn't affect me on the track at all, but it makes practicing on the street a bit difficult. If you brake later on the street (much later) you can brake harder and practice heel toe pretty effectively. Obviously this has some risks in day to day driving, and I am generally pretty cautious as to where and when I do this (generally its only when no one is around). If the only reason you want to heel toe is for daily driving, its probably not worth the hassle and potential risk.

That said, it sounds like you should practice braking harder. After some practice (specifically time on the track) I think you'll discover that you can brake very hard while still braking very smoothly.

Just relax and practice! I do this everyday now without even thinking about it on shifts now. Just takes time to make it smooth. Granted its different on track but if you can just do it everyday on the regular the feel on the track will be less foriegn. You dont need to be like flying up to redlights to practice you can just slow down like normal and still practice heel toe. Smoothness is the key here and practice so flying up to a light or something is just going to add pressure and cause you to brake faster because well hell you dont want to run the light do you lol.

I think seating position and leg room are important.
Also, the space between brake and gas does feel like miles away.
I can't rotate my foot like all pro japanese racers, so this has been a problem.
The only thing we could do is modify our method and/or car.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...age1%20(2).JPG

I purchased a set of ricer pedals they do close up the space nicely. However, with that alone, it is still difficult for me to do, I simply don't have enough leg room to rotate my leg/foot(6"2 here), cuz I sit too close to steering wheel.

So I move my seat back for about 2-3 clicks , and lean the seat forward, so I can still reach steering wheel easily. The only downside is I feel like I couldn't press clutch in as easy.

I wish EVOs comes with telescoping steering wheels, so I can get a perfect seating position. I could try adding a spacer, but I am afraid that I might **** up the anything and ending up with a crooked steering wheel.
For now, my setup has been working well.

Hope this helps.

I can't reach my gas pedal if I just brake lightly as I normally do for daily driving. Right now, the only way for me to do heel/toe smoothly is when I brake hard enough so that I can reach gas pedal. I think my problem has to be more with the depth difference than the gap between those pedals.

huh i have pretty short feet as well but i can reach but maybe ive just grown used to haveing my foot less on the brake pedal and more of my heel on the gas pedal when i due it. 10 1/2 shoe size

i dont use heel toe. instead i use the ball of my foot on the brake and the edge of my foot on the gas, similar to this picture http://www.froodee.com/lifestyle/lea...-toe-shifting/ but not as tilted. instead of rotating my foot and knee, which is hard for me, i move my whole foot to cover the space between the pedals. this also gives the benefit of being able to tilt the right edge of my foot downwards to cover the height difference when braking lightly. piloti driving shoes have an extra edge along the right foot for this purpose. i used them in the beginning but now can use my regular shoes just as easily.

Is this technique necessary for just fun track days? I find it very hard to learn this technique and its hard to practice on the street.

That is heel/toe. Ball of foot on edge of brake, roll pinky toe to the gas.
The term "heel/toe" is a misnomer.

Not at all, but it does keep the chassis stable and allows you to go quite a bit faster.

Practice. No matter what activity you do, this is like any other--- practice makes perfect. My suggestion to anyone attempting to do it is to find a nice isolated stretch of road or even really big parking lot and don't worry about speed, just do it all at normal speeds and practice. Also a heel-toe downshift from 5-4 or 4-3 is much easier to attempt than a 3-2 or 2-1 as the gearing gives you some wiggle room for error. This is in terms of not having the car bark back by bucking and repeatedly testing the seat belt lock mechanism every time you do it. Really want to feel what is going on, keep the socks, lose the shoes. Not as easy, but you can really feel the pedals.

Once you get the hang of it in a straight line, then add in some speed and then turns. Up to that point, keep it straight, do it somewhere easy that you don't have to worry about much else besides what you are doing. For me when I drive the car, it is part of my driving style as it is always a quest to be spot on.

I can also add that pedal spacing can make a huge difference. I have an Evo VIII, so for me it is perfect. Size 11 shoe, and wide at that. Now the supercharged Mini Cooper JCW that I had--- the pedals were so close that way too often I would transition from braking to the gas I would tag the brake pedal and make myself look like an idiot as the car would jerk since I wasn't expecting to hit the brake. That was with normal shoes that I wear--- Keens. Go over to a narrower athletic shoe and all was fine, but it was annoying issue nonetheless.

I did see a recent post somewhere for the Ford Fiesta if I remember correctly--- someone made a pedal spacer kit that unbolted the pedal assembly from the firewall and then allowed it to be (in their case it was not as high as the brake) brought closer to the driver, but it also had the ability to move it closer to the brake--- not sure if anything exists for the X in that respect.... I still have a throttle cable :cool:

I change my driving position when I want to heel-toe.
My "normal" driving position puts majority of my weight on my right bumcheek so I can depress the clutch easier. If I want to heel-toe, I shift my weight to my left bumcheek, shortening my left leg and being able to rotate my right foot so my heel is further up, allowing me to blip the throttle.

Play around with your driving position while the car is off, and you can find a position that fits your comfort/needs

These pedals help a lot. I have them in my 8.


http://www.srpracing.com/

I got a set of machined aluminum pedals off ebay and replaced my gas pedal with the wider one. It reduces the spacing by about .5 in, just enough to make heel-toe more manageable for those with smaller feet.

I noticed this too, I have a really hard time heel/toeing my X. I got used to tracking my 2005 Elantra before I retired it, and that car is extremely easy to master due to the pedals being closer together as well as having a much shorter gap (travel wise). Being n/a with a few intake mods made the engine respond super quick so it was easy in that sense too.


But the Evo I have yet to be really good at. I've gotten a few down but definitely need more practice. And it came as a shock to me that I was smooth in the Elantra but choppy in the Evo. Once it's back on the road, I will have to practice more. I'm 5'9 with a 10.5 shoe size, so pretty average.