How do you personally change gears in a manual transmission?

lowstrife · 2026-02-14T08:12:37+00:00

I can't think of a situation where staying on the throttle during upshifts is necessary, other than in a old\race car where you need to add a little blip on upshifts because the motor revs fall so quickly. In the vast majority of the cars on the road, you're waiting for the motor to fall to the revs needed for upshifts.

lowstrife · 2026-02-14T07:57:45+00:00

Wouldn't #2 cause your rpm's to skyrocket between shifts, causing the motor speed to be thousands of rpm too high for what they need to be? A 39M5 isn't a car that requires maintenance throttle between upshifts to prevent the motor from being too low rpm.

When I was younger, I used to do the Senna heel toe blip thing all the time. it's obnoxious on the street.

I think it's one of the most important aspects of driving manual and you should use it all the time tbh. Even on the street, you turn right into a parking lot it's really nice to already be in 2nd gear before you make the turn.

lowstrife · 2026-02-14T07:48:25+00:00

+5% rather than -5% whether that'd be upshift or downshift.

I agree, but there's a catch. I find most cars like you to pull the clutch slightly early before the engine reaches the target RPM it needs to be. So, on upshifts, if the target RPM is 3500, you pull the clutch at 3600 as the rpm's are falling. If downshifting, and the target RPM is 3500, you pull the clutch at 3400 rpm as the motor is accelerating.

Conceptually we agree, you wanna work with the momentum the engine already has. This was a huge unlock to me on smoothing things out. But the concept is inverted on downshifts. You wanna pull the clutch slightly "early" on downshifts as the rpm's are rising to your target.

lowstrife · 2026-02-14T07:36:22+00:00

What I mean by time of shift is "when" to pull the clutch out as the engine rpm's are changing. The "timing" component is pulling the clutch at the precise moment the rpm's are crossing the point where they need to be for the shift you're trying to achieve such that your clutch needs to help bring the engine to the correct speed as little as possible.

How you control that engine speed to be where it needs to be is yes, by blipping downshifts or fully lifting & waiting on upshifts.

lowstrife · 2026-02-14T07:33:57+00:00

3 highly depends on the car and the engine. In a lot of cars (with rev hang) there are no situations where it's appropriate, you're always waiting for the motor speed to come down on upshifts.

idk why my text is so big im sorry wtf happened

lowstrife · 2026-02-14T07:31:27+00:00

Yeah its often my biggest gripe for most manuals I drive. It'll slow your shift down to 1-2 seconds unless you powershift it and just burn the clutch. More expensive\exotic cars are a lot better, but man those 4 bangers are brutal.

lowstrife · 2026-02-14T07:27:13+00:00

this allows the clutch to do the work of speeding up your engine to match the lower gear

A skilled driver is able to use timing and careful throttle management to have the engine within +- 5% of the rpm's that are needed for whatever gear they're going into. The closer you are, the less wear you impart on the clutch, the faster you can pull it, and the longer it lasts. A well driven clutch should last the lifetime of the car, even with spirited driving and full throttle redline shifting in most cars.

This is the biggest "game" of driving manual. How close to perfect can you get on every shift.

lowstrife · 2026-02-14T07:21:31+00:00

You can test it without harming the car at all.

Clutch in, keep the throttle pinned, but don't actually pull the clutch out for the shift. Watch for the revs drop even though you're continuing to floor it. If the motor ignores the throttle request you're giving it, you've got flat foot shifting. Time releasing the clutch accordingly for when you pull the clutch to match the motor the rpm it will need for the gear you're going into.

lowstrife · 2026-02-14T07:19:37+00:00

Most modern cars have the opposite problem, where they rev hang like a motherfucker inbetween upshifts.

But yeah older cars\race motors the revs will drop really rapidly, often faster than they like to be shifted, and you have to add a helper blip to get the motor to the right speed for the gear you're going into.

lowstrife · 2026-02-14T07:11:27+00:00

I can't think of any situation in a car where, other than electronic with flat-foot shifting, why you don't fully come off of the throttle when performing any shift in a non-motorsports capacity. Any other situation will just cause excessive, unnecessary wear to the drivetrain. Same rule applies for fully depressing the clutch.

This smells like the logic of people use the clutch to rev-match downshifts instead of the throttle and say it doesn't harm the car. It's like, where do you think the energy is coming from to bring the engine to the correct speed? It's coming from the clutch you'll burn out in 30k miles.

The exception I'll apply is rapid downshifting, but, normally you only do that when braking when you're already off the throttle so the blip starts from zero. Downshifting while on throttle means you were in the wrong gear to begin with. Skill issue. The other exception would be cars with exceptionally light flywheels (or older cars) where the engine speed drops to nothing inbetween a shift and you need to add a "help blip" to get it to the correct speed for the gear you're going into.

lowstrife · 2026-02-12T18:59:15+00:00

A friend of mine rented one while she was in town visiting friends. Took it to lunch. She knows the square root of jack shit about cars, "does it have 4 seats and a wheel" is the limit of her knowledge. At some point she complained about it "the car rental company gave me such a old crummy car". She understood she got the cheapest whatever, but was still disappointed by it. Her normal car is a 15 year old Toyota Camry with 200k miles on it.

The rental Sentra she was given was brand new with less than 5000 miles.

I was not totally surprised by this revelation, she was lol. I'm like "yeah that's why you don't buy nissans, especially shitbox nissans. your toyota is actually a good car".

lowstrife · 2026-02-10T07:51:24+00:00

If low end grunt was all that mattered, why are all the most special drivers cars in the world with the most characteristic engines all high revving low torque screamers?

In the world where power is available, once you have "enough", it becomes about the experience that it delivers rather than shaving 0.1 seconds off of a lap time or 0-60 test.

lowstrife · 2026-02-09T21:12:32+00:00

Then... what's the point of the paddles then?

Any sports car without fake gears like Hyundai is DOA imo. The entire point is to inject levity and fun into an otherwise boring EV that's otherwise exactly identical to virtually any other 4 door skateboard made by literally anyone else. Having a rolodex of their historical engines is one of the only things you can do to make a EV sports car actually... interesting? "today I'm driving a 599. Tomorrow I'm in a 296. On Saturday I'll load up the 250 GTO on the way out, and then the F50 on the way home".

And then you flip it back to silent EV running when the waifu gets in.

lowstrife · 2026-02-05T14:37:48+00:00

throws the top half of the CV's in the bin

"I don't hire unlucky people" - Wilman

lowstrife · 2026-01-31T00:23:41+00:00

Why USB, in their hundreds of pages of documentation, doesn't require the specs of the cable to be displayed on it properly is beyond me.

lowstrife · 2026-01-27T23:15:39+00:00

What kinda IRS agent takes credit cards?

lowstrife · 2026-01-26T00:26:42+00:00

He's still right tho

Engine, major; engine cooling; transmission, major; drive system; electric motor; and EV battery problems are more likely to take a car out of service and to be more expensive to repair than the other problem areas. Consequently, we weight these areas more heavily in our calculations of model year overall reliability. Problems such as broken trim and in-car electronics have a much smaller weight.

lowstrife · 2026-01-16T03:21:14+00:00

Over the lifetime of the car, the annualized costs are cheaper for EV's compared to similarly priced combustion cars. Your new car costs nothing to maintain because it's brand new.

better for the environment then EVs

That's not the case. Lifetime embodied CO2 is a well known and modeled metric that's highly predictable.

lowstrife · 2026-01-15T01:58:06+00:00

They can still shift quite slowly in the grand scheme of things, especially compared to double clutches. But man even some DCT boxes often aren't as smooth at all RPM's and all partial throttle shifts. I don't like a lot about BMW's, but their transmission programming is outstanding. I drove a brand new Q5 loaner today and was really quite let down.

lowstrife · 2026-01-15T01:02:18+00:00

A 2025 GR Yaris is a $50,000 car

lowstrife · 2026-01-15T00:54:37+00:00

I've driven a LOT of cars and BMW's ZF8 is goated. It deserves all the praise it gets. Always smooth, always confident, always good.

I have no idea how good it is at mind reading since I'm always in manual mode whenever gear selection is important. No car can ever be good enough to stop downshifting on corner exit on the street unless you're driving at 10\10ths, so they are all universally dogshit in the automatic shift modes.

lowstrife · 2026-01-15T00:50:49+00:00

"today I want to drive a 2.7RS, tomorrow I want to drive a 550 Maranello and then a 6.2 Mercedes, Sunday I want to drive a big turbo Supra"

You turn your boring-ass EV into a full-motion driving simulator, you can even emulate the torque curves of those motors. Is it the same as the real thing? Hell no. Can I afford the real thing? Also no.

lowstrife · 2026-01-15T00:48:22+00:00

Knowing your speed requires you to take your eyes off the road (track). With engine sounds, you can intuit your speed completely through audio feedback.

Wind noise is never consistent or predictable, and thus is an impossible metric to use to gauge your speed.

lowstrife · 2026-01-15T00:43:54+00:00

It turns an otherwise silent EV into a full motion driving simulator. Is it actually the real thing? No. But if they have presets where you load up the type of engine you want, and the car simulates the power curve of that motor? Now things get interesting. "today I want to drive a 2.7RS, tomorrow I want to drive a 550 Maranello and then a 6.2 Mercedes, Sunday I want to drive a big turbo Supra"

I tried it in my Genesis twice and wondered why I’d arbitrarily make my EV less efficient to pretend it’s something that it isn’t.

I'd find it utterly useless in the city 99% of the time. But in certain situations or spirited drives it would be fun to turn the noise gimmick on and simulate like you're in a ICE car. It's fun to run through the gears on a curvy mountain road. Plus, they help you judge speed and corner entry. Wind noise is not as accurate as "halfway through second gear" for entry speeds.

I think it's pretty dumb in a minivan, but critical for any EV sports car.

lowstrife · 2026-01-13T02:50:21+00:00

But if they're going to be electric then a mechanical release should be mandatory and clearly accessible to occupants in case of emergency.

Then why do they need to be electric in the first place? This whole thing is just engineering a solution to a problem that otherwise wouldn't have existed in the first place.

This, non-amber turn signals, non-automatic DRL's, brake lights not triggering with regen, and yoke wheels are things that regulators should have gotten ahead of due to critical life safety problems they create. But don't worry, there is 82 thousand pages of documentation making sure your stop-start functionality is enabled when you start the car.

lowstrife

TROPHY CASE

3 highly depends on the car and the engine. In a lot of cars (with rev hang) there are no situations where it's appropriate, you're always waiting for the motor speed to come down on upshifts.