I feel for ya, bro... 15's here.... I go through the same thing.

 

Word, it creates much less stress on the ol synchros. I heal to toe or rev match almost every downshift.

 

what do you guys mean by match your revs?

i want to try to do this, but as i put my clutch in and press on my brakes wile giving a rev to the gas, how do i no what to rev it at?

 

matching revs means revving your engine up into the higher RPMs before you downshift.

if you don't and try to downshift with brute force, your transmission will take a flying shat.

 

I read some advice on rev-matching on this site a while back when I was learning how to drive stick.


go find a nice long stretch of highway and start by driving in the low speed end of 5th gear. Then shift into 4th. note the way the engine increases rpm (helps if ya have a gauge). Shift into 5th again and then do the same downshift BUT this time give it a little bit of throttle while you do this. Try to match the rpm that your engine is about to be forced up to in the shift. If you do it right, you shouldn't feel anything while you're shifting back and forth, you should just hear the change in rpm.

now try 5th to 3rd, 4th to 3rd, 3rd to 2nd ..... (keep it in safe rpms for your engine)

Note that if you take your foot off the gas in the lower gear, your car slows down rapidly. This is a great way to slow down if you hit sudden slippery conditions because it's like anti-lock brakes.

 

It is definitely fun and an accomplishment one can rightly be proud of when he masters this, but I don't really see much of a daily driving value. One probably can save a few hundred or even a few thousand miles out of ~200K of tranny life this way, but probably not more than that. Syncros are designed to do this job, and I just prefer to let them do their work.

 

i still havent figured out how to do it....i was trying it yesterday, and felt like a retard learning calculus....