Hey guys, trying to do the least amount of damage to my car so trying to develop good driving habits. Ok I'm cruising around at 45 mph in 5th gear and I'm gonna make a right turn at 17 mph in 2nd gear. What I usually do is leave the car in 5th, slow down to my turning speed still in 5th but I don't accelerate. Once I'm at my turning speed i then take it out of 5th, skip all the other gears and put it in 2nd and give it a little blip before releasing the clutch. I just want to know if i'm damaging my car doing this? How do you usually go about this situation?

 

if your in 5th gear slowing down to 20mph to take a turn you don't even have to blip the throttle. the synchros will take care of it. but no you aren't damaging anything.

 

Personally, I put the car in Neutral and then go with whatever gear, depending on speed

 

Awesome thanks. The reason I blip is because even though I'm going slow I still get the engine breakimg and I try to avoid that, unless im mot going slow enough.

I usually try to keep the car in gear as much as possible so I only use neutral when I'm guaranteed to stop.

 

Heel-and-toeing down through all of the gears, if done correctly, is not hard on the car (i.e., the clutch) and is the safest way to drive (because you can change your mind and escape if about to be rear-ended) and is a great skill to have.

If you can't heel-and-toe, then just shoving it into neutral once you're going too slow for 5th is the easiest on the car. Going down through all the gears without "blipping" is a bunch of extra uses of the clutch to change the engine's speed, which will help wear it out faster. Plus, each of those non-heel-and-toe downshifts will upset the car, which might annoy your passengers.

It's best to learn to heel-and-toe in a car that doesn't costs a bundle to change the clutch, such as an Evo. A good, old-fashioned, Amurican, longitudinal, front-engine/rear-drive car takes only a hour and $100 in parts to do a clutch. But even if all you have access to is a transverse, front-engine car, I would still learn to heel-and-toe now, rather than later.

(Didn't we have this discussion a few weeks ago?)

 

I actually know how to heel toe. The last thread was about regular downshifting, this one I was asking if leaving it in gear while you brake is ok. I would actually always heel toe but I was asked why I would do so much just to turn and that was the only way I knew how to actually since I learned heel toe within a few weeks since I'm stubborn like that. So I was wondering if there was a less try hard way of doing that.

 

I know what you're going through...when I got my first Evo I was the most paranoid person ever. Trust me these cars can take a beating.

Anyway, when I'm approaching a turn it depends if it's red or green, I usually either downshift until I'm at the right speed/gear or if it's red I just stick it in neutral and full stop.

 

Haha, that's exactly what I'm going through. Not to mention I'm cursed by being a perfectionist, so I try learning the ideal way. Although it has definitely helped.

 

Apologies. The only time that people down-shift without using the brakes is when they encounter a hill. We don't have those in Iowa. That's why I saw these two threads as the same.

In any event, the answer is the same. In the ideal case, the car is always in the appropriate gear for the ground-speed, such that you can change your mind and speed up without waiting while you put the car into gear. With that said, when you are quite sure that you will not need to suddenly speed up (such as coasting or braking to a stop in traffic, with nowhere to go even if you wanted), then just shoving it into neutral is perfectly sensible. In fact, people who blip their way down through all gears in such situations are often pathetic show-offs (and the 13-year-old girl in the passenger seat has no idea how slick said driver is being and, even if she did, a few clean heel-and-toes aren't going to cause her to revise her current low opinion of her dad's driving after that "off" we had a few weeks ago).

 

While this is true, the trick is to leave it in gear for the longest amount of time possible. You will notice that your AFR skyrockets to 21.0. That is not a misprint. Most engines use absolutely no fuel when slowing down as such. Fuel only comes into play to keep the engine from stalling. When you blip the throttle, you are actually reintroducing fuel to the motor. I realize that this is not the appropriate response all the time, but I try to be mindful of that fact. I feel as though I am saving the planet...even though I have no cat and have been known the mash the throttle here and there shooting massive flames out the back of the car.

 

For street driving perfectly fine, as long as you put it in a right gear after.

 

The point about coasting fuel-cut is a good one. I learned to drive back in the days of carbs, not FI.