Scaff
Alfa
I quite agree with most of what you have said above and if its OK I would like to 'borrow' (with a credit to yourself) the Colin Chapman/Lotus bit for the GT4 & Brakes thread.
Not a problem. But, I'll dig out the book I read it in, and confirm the details for you on the bit. Then it can be credited to its true source, which was Doug Nye in conjunction with Chapman himself. Yup, it's an old book...
Scaff
I must confess to using heel and toe on every downshift, for three reasons. The first is to keep in practice, the second is that it does smooth out gear changes and avoids compression braking and the final one is because I do enjoy 'spirited' road driving.
While we're in confessional, I'll confess to two things: I will downshift instead of braking if I feel a complete stop is not imminent, for no better reason than it bugs me when driving in a stream of cars when the person in front is constantly applying brakes without really slowing down. When he does suddenly brake hard, I'm less prepared for it unless I had a clear view of conditions ahead of him. I assume someone behind me will have the same problem and I don't want to be rear ended because my driving habits caused the person behind me to under react when I had to brake hard. I also prefer to the better response I then have immediately available to the throttle than I would have if I was in a higher gear and using the brakes.
Second confessional: I double clutch my downshifts and I heel and toe. The reason I started this is because my much missed Alfa had a worn synchromesh on second gear. This will be no surprise to anyone familiar to the Alfetta range. The result was that I had to be gentle when shifting from first to second, but there was absolutely no way I could shift down into second. It would crunch and moan, and not engage, unless I double-clutched it in. If I wanted to change down into second gear while still braking, then of course I had to heel-and-toe. But, I've got small feet and I found the Alfa's pedals slightly too far apart to heel and toe, so I used to actually brake with my ankle twisted clockwise so my heel was on the brakes and my toes covering the throttle.
The reason I continue to heel and toe is because once while driving a FF Nissan, I managed to lock the front wheels while braking really hard for a corner, and downshifting without double clutching. It was a nasty experience and I am sure it wasn't very good for the car either.
Nowadays it's just a habit. It also makes the gearshift less reluctant, so I assume double clutching downshifts is easier on the gearbox..
But it's not a required skill to being a perfectly competent and fast road driver.
Oh, and Peacekeeper, what I meant was that most slushboxes I have had the misfortune of piloting have only allowed the manual selection of 2nd and 3rd gear, but not 1st and top. Tiptronic, which first appeared on a 911 in 1989 (I think. Maybe it was 1988) was an automatic gearbox that allowed the selection of all gears from 1st to top. The selection indeed had to be sequential, but there was nothing stopping the driver from shifting down from top to first via fourth, third and second as fast as he could, apart from some anti - overrevving software. I call the clutchless manual gearbox semi automatics because that's what Ferrari called theirs in their F1 car, and because those based on a manual gearbox are far from clutchless. To prove that, just try a three point turn in a Ferrari with a paddleshift, and then inhale deeply to verify the presence of a frying clutch.
means you don't have to worry about every shift, useful for endurances I would thinkk
