In particular, the transition from first to second. The car in question is a 2013 Mazdaspeed 3 that I’ve mentioned now and again around these boards; in general, I love it and all of its zoom-zoominess. My background: I’d never driven a stick until one day I gave a Honda Civic a good shot of gas on the highway and it dropped into 2nd at 65-70mph. Not what I wanted it to do, and it scared the crap out of me. I decided I wanted more control in a car–so I went out and traded it in on a manual Hyundai Elantra. My stick-training consisted of sitting in a parking lot on a Saturday morning with my dad, “mastering” the basics of getting it into gear. I then drove around a bunch that weekend and on Monday was driving the car at work, which involved a lot of driving.
Anyway, here I am today. (Note: I had about 3-5 years not driving an anything between the Elantra and the 'speed.) The 'speed has a pretty grippy, sporty clutch, but I get it into gear (slowly) without much issue any more, most of the time. I’m also pretty damn smooth upshifting gears 2 through 6. Downshifting is fine too, though I seldom need to do it for a burst of power and could probably use some work on that. The place where I have the most trouble, for whatever reason, is shifting from first into second. What seems to happen is this: I get up to wherever it is I feel like shifting–for sake of argument, we’ll say 3500-4000 RPMs. I put in the clutch and take my foot off the gas. Rather than dropping quickly, the revs stay fairly high, dropping only slowly. I shift to second and release the clutch. The revs, which were still fairly high, drop rapidly to where they should be for second, and the car feels as if it’s surging (though I don’t think that’s really the right description–it’s not suddenly accelerating or anything, there’s just not that first gear engine braking holding it back). While I don’t know if this is bad for the car or anything, it’s not the most comfortable sensation and certainly lacks any sort of elegance or boy-racer cred, I’m sure.
So what am I doing wrong here, and how should I fix it?
More generally, I wonder if it would behoove me to take a proper course in manual transmission driving sometime–I’ve considered it, as well as a “performance driving” course, since I’ve got this snazzy car with some power and stuff.
A lot of newer stick shifts I’ve driven do the thing where the revs don’t drop very fast with the clutch in. I assume it has something to do with emissions. It does feel somewhat clunky, but you’ll get used to it. If you let off the gas a little bit before you put the clutch in, that seems to help, but that’s obviously not completely optimum for acceleration.
1st to 2nd gear shifts still require you to slip the clutch pedal while applying the gas. It’s not as delicate an operation as starting from a full stop in 1st, but it still requires a little finness and practice.
Another suggestion might be is that you short-shift from 1st to second. In other words, don’t rev the engine to 3-4K but shift quickly at around 2-2.5K. It’s not as quick/aggressive of a start off the line but you get into the gear you want to be in for city traffic sooner and ultimately smoother.
none of the gears beyond 1st require ANY clutch slip. In fact, they don’t require the use of the clutch at all. If you match engine speed to the gear they will mesh up. It requires a transmission with synchronizes so model T’s and the odd dump truck won’t have them and you’ll have to double clutch it.
I routinely drive without using the clutch in gears other than 1st and reverse. I’m not recommending the op do this but waiting for the engine rpm to match the gear is what is needed. When this happens it will feel smooth. Do this when you’re “coasting” between gears and there will be no feel at all with the shift. By coasting I mean neither accelerating or decelerating at the time of the shift. This applies to shifting anything with gears. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen someone hammer through gears on a bike when all they need to do is coast through each shift.
Well, and if you do want to flog it around a track and shift smoothly, the solution probably is just lingering in the friction zone a little longer during shifts than your manual transmission instincts learned on older cars would tell you. Using the clutch to basically slow the engine down during a shift shouldn’t cause too much extra wear.
When you shift to second, just wait a little longer for the RPMs to drop before letting the clutch back out. Timed correctly, you need not be in the friction zone at all.
This is true for all shifts, regardless of gear. The problem with 1->2 shifts is that in such low gears, the inertia of the engine has maximum mechanical advantage against the inertia of the car - so in an engine/gearbox speed mismatch, the engine wins the argument (in 4->5 or 5->6 shifts, the engine has minimal mechanical advantage, so the car wins any speed mismatch arguments).
Thanks for the advice, folks; we’ll see if we can’t get this a little bit smoother. Like I said, I’m pretty slick at the others in regular driving–driving hard things get a little bit less silky, but still good enough.
If you don’t / can’t get 2nd gear ‘scratch,’ Then either you or the car is not all that ‘sporty.’ ( In the 1950’s & 60’s before I learned how fast things wore out & how expensive they were for a part time working high school kid.)
I want my big block muscle cars back in a range I can afford. )
1st to 2nd should also be done lightning fast and with brutal execution! Stab the clutch! Hammer the shifter! Dump the clutch and nail the gas!
Practice. It gets easier and smoother all the time. Get it right and a passenger doesn’t even know you shifted.
Let me put this another way: 1st is usually pretty low and only used to get you going, so if you let the revs die too low while shifting to second, you are going to bog and lurch. Use the momentum built up in 1st, make a quick change and get back on the gas before the revs get too low. It can be done smoothly.
Indeed. This isn’t roughness from having the RPMs go up–quite the opposite. Without actually being in my car and observing, my recollection is that, assuming I’m up in the 3-3.5K RPM range when I depress the clutch, we might be talking about a 1-1.5K RPM drop when I release it (because it’s still floating up in the 3K region).
…and you’re sure your right foot is completely off the accelerator pedal?
What if you accelerate in first to your normal RPM and instead of shifting to second gear, you simply put the car in neutral and release the clutch… what does the engine do then as you keep rolling?
You made me curious. My 2008 Mazdaspeed3 doesn’t hold the RPMs like that, at the most it takes about 1.5 seconds for the RPMs to drop from 4000 to 3000. Maybe the newer ones have a heavier flywheel or different programming for some reason.
A further option is to experiment with skipping second gear altogether and going straight to third. It’s tricky but doable, and useful if first gear already got you most of the way to the speed you wanted to accelerate to. But the RPM issue would still need to be finessed.
Ok, so I paid rather close attention to things on my drive home last night. I was exaggerating things a bit, though not intentionally. What I think is really going on is that the difference in gear ratios between first and second (3.214 vs. 1.913) is so much more pronounced than the difference in ratios between the other gears (varying from a difference of 0.547 between second and third to 0.077 between fourth and fifth*) that if I shift with the normal rhythm that I use for the others, the revs are still quite high compared to where they need to be and so I get that “surging” sensation when they come down when the clutch engages. By paying closer attention and staying on the clutch a bit longer, I was able to smooth the transition out quite a bit.
It’s also possible that I may be lingering on the gas for an instant as I get on the clutch, nudging the RPMs up a bit higher and leaving them with even farther to come down. If I am doing this, it’s probably working to my advantage on the other transitions, putting things right about where they need to be when I let off the clutch, but with this bigger difference in ratios, it’s just causing trouble from first to second.
*No one should be surprised that I often skip fifth gear entirely…
What you about the difference in ratios makes sense. The ~2007-2009 Mazdaspeed3s are very fast cars but their 0-60 time didn’t necessarily reflect that because you couldn’t quite get to 60 in second gear. Having to change to third gear added quite a bit of time. So I think they reworked the ratios in 2010, and that’s what you’re seeing. I assume you can get to 60MPH in second gear?
