That reason sounds totally bogus to me.
You might not stall, if the rear car gave you enough of a shunt to push you into the intersection then the car will just slip in to gear and keep going rather than stall.
Keeping the clutch depressed for a long time overheats and damages the thrust bearing and the pressure plate springs. A hydraulic clutch is identical in that respect to a wire-linked clutch.
Having the transmission continuously engaged does not mean you’re using engine compression to slow the car down; you downshift to get in the right gear, and you stomp hard on the brakes to slow your car down (the fact that the engine is also dragging slightly is nearly irrelevant). I’ve taken racing classes, and the instructors would get on your ass if you used your engine for slowing down. Part of the idea of racing is that you should go as fast as absolutely possible until exactly the right moment, then you slow down as fast as humanly possible to get to your corner speed. Using your engine is just plain not a fast enough way to slow down.
Cecil has it right for general driving, but not for high-performance driving. Sure, most of the time I’m not “racing” and when I’m on the street the downshifting is technically unnecessary in that I can make it into and out of corners just fine without it. However, I’m in the habit of applying the same principles on the road that I use on the track (just at lower speeds), because they result in better control of the car: if you take a corner at 15mph and I take a corner at 15mph, I can practically guarantee you my margin of safety on that corner is greater than yours, because I used racing principles: I did my braking in a straight line and held my speed constant in the corner, whereas most people do not.
Where’s the love?
Hey, nothing personal. I just don’t think it makes any sense. If you’ve got your foot on the brake, you’ve already got the wheels locked up. The major force in a crash hard enough to push you into the intersection is going to be the inertia of your multi-thousand pound vehicle. If you get hit hard enough to throw you into the intersection, I doubt if your tires are really going to stop you anyway.
I was once getting a ride from someone who would take the gears all the way back when she was at a complete stop. 5-4-3-2-1. I always wondered why she did that. Was it just a weird habit? I never do that with my gearshift after I’m stopped.
There are people who have the mistaken belief that you have to shift through each gear. 5-4-3-2-1 down and 1-2-3-4-5 up. Probably no one has told her that it is not necessary and she can slow down and stop in 5th, then change directly to 1st.
This is the single factoid in this thread that might be useful new information for me, if it’s true. I’ve often pondered the question of whether 'tis nobler to sit at a stop light in first gear with clutch pedal depressed (ready to move promptly) or sit in neutral with clutch engaged (with uncertain benefits, until now mostly associated with resting my leg).
Can any other mechanics out there back up this contention that less clutch depression materially extends clutch life?
I’ve always assumed that the springs and thrust bearings were more-or-less good for better than the life of the vehicle and the object was to reduce pressure plate engagements to a minimum. But that was an assumption that may need to be revised.
Maybe, and if so, he’s not a very good driver. But I don’t think that’s what he’s doing.
You’re thinking of double-clutching, which is not the same as heel-toe.
Okay, I’ve said that I have been following several different racing series (including WRC and Formula 1) for decades, I have taken the Skip Barber 3-day Racing School, I’ve been driving non-competitively on race tracks for more than six years, and have been instructing high-performance driving for two years. You admit you don’t follow car racing and contradict what I said without a cite.
I don’t want to be rude, but if you can find an authoritative cite for your claim, I’ll eat my words and my hat. Until then I’ll simply assert that you, and anyone else who claims that racers routinely use engine braking on track, are misinformed and mistaken.
Galt has it exactly right:
Oh, no. A throw-out bearing is a common problem in manuals.
[
](http://www.carcare.org/Manual_Transmission/throw-out_bearing.shtml)
Thanks Airman. We’re getting warm here.
The link you provided says the throw-out bearing “should be replaced when clutch replacement becomes necessary.” Is that a routine procedure on any clutch replacement? Is it common to have to replace the throw-out bearing even though the clutch plates are fine? In other words, does it really save me money to put 'er in neutral at stop lights?
I have my doubts about the original video as well.
The driver takes 1 minute and 5 seconds to travel between the Etoile and the Place de la Concorde, a distance of 1.31 miles in a dead straight line. That’s an average speed of 71.5mph for that stretch. OK, he has to accelerate out of the Etoile, and decelerate into Concorde, and en route has to avoid a yellow car. But to judge from the engine note he’s almost flat out most of the way. A Ferrari 275 GTB has a top speed of (Googles) 150mph-ish so maybe he did the whole thing in second gear?
I’ve just checked again, and he does the stretch from the rond point of the Galerie Elysee to Concorde in 25 seconds, flat out, dead straight with no obstructions or significant deceleration. That’s 0.5 miles exactly, or 72mph.
Sorry, I should have been clearer. I was taught to do this because if you get rear ended and your foot slips off the clutch, you’re going to stall out if your car is in gear. If you are in neutral and your foot slips off the brake, you’re hosed.
You know how it is with driving stick, everything is second nature and any deviation from the way you were taught just feels wrong.
Manual transmission engine braking and down shifting:
Bad time:
Real auto racing.
When you want maxim life from all components, many people drive this way never doing anything fun or harmful to their cars. They all know that on the average day by the average Joe, down shifting and engine braking are the most detrimental things that can and usually are done to the family car by all drivers including 16 year old sis and boy child and Mom who learned in an automatic.
When you have to do all your own maintenance and don’t know how to do anything but put in gas and oil and do not know what an oil change is and have no tools and no money.
Good time:
Long descents to save on brake wear/fade unless you have non fade racing brakes then you just love to wear them out as they are so cheap compared to letting the engine hold a comfortable speed on the 2 mile grade with your cabin cruiser boat hooked up…
When you have just passed the State Police sitting in the bushes.
When you are playing hare and hound on the city streets and are not smart nuff to have a brake light kill switch installed.
Improper clutch work will do more damage on average than many hours of skillful playing ever will. *:: 300 Z car — she squealed the tires on launch and a second time because she could not learn to properly work the clutch.
She let the engine go to idle before letting the clutch out quickly at each gear shift so the tires chirped twice at each gear change. She held the clutch in with the transmission engaged any time the even while it was cold and was waiting for it to warm up. It was her sons car and she kept us putting $150 a pop tires on it and complained about how they wore out so fast. Must be true that 10 minutes a month that I got to drive it and played with it including using engine braking was the problem. :: *
Personal experience here on a 90 Mustang GT and a 98 Contour SE. When I know I’ll have to stop, I take my foot off the gas well in advance and drift. I usually go from 5th down to 3rd, drift more letting the engine braking do it’s thing, then finally push in the clutch when I’m almost stopped. That worked for the 150,000+ miles I had the Mustang and the 163,000+ miles I’ve had my Contour. Original clutch in both. The brake pads on my Contour lasted over 100,000 miles, when I needed to replace the rear pads first for some reason.
If I have to stop suddenly I brake while downshifting to 4th. Braking in neutural seems wasteful of brake pads to me, let the engine compression help slow you down.
I don’t burn rubber or abuse the cars either, which I’m sure has a lot to do with clutch longevity.
Okay, so my manual says shift up & down at 15mph, 25mph, 40mph, & 45mph. If I’m going fifity and need to brake, I apply my brakes. When the car slows to 45mph, I push down on the clutch; shift from fifth to fourth; and quick hit the accelerator with the side of my foot so that when I release the clutch in fourth gear, the rpm & speed properly match for that gear. Is that it?
Ostensibly (and skepticism aside), the driver is supposed to be doing that in the movie. He would be braking with the clutch out, then push it in, shift & blip, then let it out again, all without taking his foot off the gas. Is that about right?
[hijack]—do you know if there are any HPDE opportunities in Michigan and what sort of prices can one generally expect to pay for a session? Thanks![/hijack]
Removing the gearbox (which gives access to the clutch) is a process that takes 2 hours minimum and another 2 hours to put everything back together. You don’t want to spend 4 hours for changing the clutch plates only to find after 1000 miles that the bearing needs to be replaced too.
A throw out bearing costs about 5 dollars, so it is prudent to replace it just in case.
I don’t know Paris, so don’t know which portion contain the sites you mention. But the link I posted earlier calculates his speed throughout the film and has charts showing his speed at different points. Only once does he approach 150 mph, and that’s the only time he gets much above 90 mph.
I wouldn’t trust the engine noise. As others have posted, the tire squeals don’t sound right in several places and were likely added, the engine noises may have been added too. I would say that I don’t think the noises were dubbed in as a trick. It would be difficult to record all that without sound equipment and microphones mounted at various places on the car.
All I know is he’s driving faster than I would under those circumstances. Now, close the road off to vehicles and pedestrians and I’ll give it a shot. 
Those charts are wrong. The distance/time chart shows a relatively constant velocity, which doesn’t correspond to the other chart.
The portion of the film that shows the run between Etoile and Concorde is from about 1 min 30s to 2 min 30s- Etoile is where the Arc de Triomphe is (the large arch), and Concorde is the large square with a small obelisk in the middle. This is the only part of the journey where a speed of 150mph looks at all possible, but the speed is never much above 70mph.
The entire journey is about 6.5 miles and takes about 8 minutes- average speed is about 48mph.