manual driving tips

Hello,

I was wondering if anyone can give me some good tips on driving manual.
I know some already and i would like to know more based on others opinions/experiences

- dont ride the clutch, as in dont put it in first gear for long, jus put it into neutral.
- double clutchin for downshifting is good

and thas all i can think of

ty

Find out the torque peak of your car / torque curve. Shift a few hundred RPM's past torque peak, rev match, and land the RPM's back as close to the torque peak as possible. Attempt to rev-match like this on each shift so as to keep the RPM's in the power band.

how do i found out the torque peak?

Hunt around online - you should be able to find it. If you absolutely can't find it, then this is how you can kind of gestimate it:

First of all, it's a little different in different gears, but it's roughly the same, so here's what you do:

Take off in first gear at WOT, watch the RPM's / Speedo / feel the pull. If it's too hard to do this at the same time, have someone help you, or videotape it.

The RPM's will shoot up, keep climbing, and the car will gradually pull harder and harder, and then after a certain point it will "bwagooggggg"" down and not pull hard anymore, when this happens, you know you are over your torque peak. So what you need to do is run it in each gear, and get a feeling of where it "pulls hardest" (also where your speedo is climbing the fastest). Try running it a couple times, and after you find out the RPM that it's pulling hardest as, that is your torque peak. So like I said earlier, in an ideal engine, the RPM's would always be running at the torque peak (optimum power / torque). So when you shift, shift a little bit past it, and rev match in between, so when you hit the new gear, it should land a little below the torque peak and then climb right back into it. You want to keep the RPM's as close to the torque peak as possible at all times. If you have a smaller displacement engine, in general, to torque curve / torque peak run a lot higher in the higher RPM's. (they must spin higher to make lots of power due to the lower mass of the engine internals) In larger displacement engines, the torque peak lies a lot lower due to the greater mass / displacement of the engine parts. (thus why big trucks that do lots of towing redline so low - they need lowend torque for pulling things).

Hope that helps.

Practice practice practice...

Ridenour, I'd heard in the past that one should shift @ max horsepower (rather than torque), as this will then drop the engine RPM down to the peak torque level ... Not too versed on mechanics myself, so not sure which side to believe.

My car is certainly a small displacement engine (2.0L 8v), but as its German, not Japanese, it drops more torque than hp - 122 lb-ft @ 3000 rpm + 115 hp @ 5400 rpm.
I almost never drive past 4000 rpm anyway, but I'd think that for max acceleration, I'd want to drive up to around 5500 rpm, rather than always shifting at 3500?

Hmmm... well horsepower curves aren't always neccesarily above the torque curve. I suppose in your engine (assuming yours revs pretty damn high, like 6000 red line maybe?) - I would compromise between the torque and HP peak, and shift at about 4000. That's where I think you'd land it best - but unless I could really see your curves on a dyno chart, it's hard to say. Your best bet is just simply trial and error. Take it out for a few runs and experiment shifting at different points - revving to redline just a few times shouldn't hurt anything, especially in such a small displacement engine.

when is the torque peak ever higher than the hp peak?

i never heard of that.

apparently you want to shift just after peak hp to land near peak torque to get the most of the power band, which is between both peaks. At least thats my understanding.