No Clutch Shifting 3106

gpsman

Huh? Why would you buttume that anyone buying a car doesn't have the need or desire to have a manual gearbox? Or that the only vehicles that ever need to be downshifted are trucks going downhill? My wife prefers the 5-speed in her Jaguar for better speed control (Yeah; she engine brakes just like I do.), especially in winter. I almost invariably go both up *and down* through the gears in my BMW. I even haul a small (Clbutt I) tilt-bed with it. We hate slushboxes. We both know how to drive a manual well and I have never changed out a failed or slipping clutch in cars that we drive*.

It is good practice to always be in a gear with which you can accelerate well, whether it's to react to a road hazard or simply to be able to accelerate out of a turn. Using *your* suggestions, if you are halfway stopped from typical highway speed, you have the choice of lugging the engine in top gear or hoping that you're going slow enough to be able to get into first without overrevving, and maybe destroying, the engine. OTOH, *I'll* be in the right gear.

While you are theoretically correct, in practical application, it depends on the driver and the equipment. -- C.R. Krieger (BT, DT)

* I recently replaced the perfectly good, about half-worn, original clutch in my latest '88 BMW - because the original throwout bearing was failing at 175,000 miles. Our mid-'80s Audi Quattros (sold *only* with 5-speed manuals at that time) each went over 232,000 miles on the original clutches before being retired for other reasons ... and I regularly autocrossed mine, using a 4000-rpm launch. I never had to mess with my original Toyota clutches well past 100k miles, either.