Ok, I'm new to driving a manual transmission and I have the basic stuff down. I want to tackle downshifting - but I'm afraid to actually try it without knowing what gears to shift into.

I did a search and didn't yield any results, so....

What I'm wondering is if I'm running 75-80 on the e-way, and someone wants to **** around - what gear would I drop into and what tips and things are there to look out for. Or even for just passing - I've tried downshifting before and never really had much power off the downshift.

I'm so clueless on downshifting...

 

if you have a ss/sc... basically 1st gear will take you till like 35mph or so, 2nd gear will take you to bout 65mph, 3rd will take you to 100mph, i havent tested 4th, but yea, if your going 70 you don't want to go to 2nd gear cause you have no running room left. safe downshift to 3rd. get it got it? good.

 

at about 60 i put it in 3rd.
at 75-80 put it in 4th.

I was driving between bradley and manteno at the st. george rd. stop light and this trans am was in the turn lane goin left. I nail it at the stoplight when it turns green. The trans am get out of the turn lane and jets towards me. Im a about 80 in 5th gear cuz i only raced halfway throught 2nd gear. He passes me at about 90. I threw it in 4th and nailed it. I get to the top end of 4th and pass him then slow down to about 70 cuz we were almost in manteno.

hah good times. I ordered my filter today!

 

Best thing you can do is just experiment. When going 75 in 5th down shift to fourth and see how high it's reving, then try going to 3rd, ect. Try it at different speeds.

 

Errr... better yet... don't do what leviticus just said... because you could expirament yourself into a blown motor or an accident and that would be bad.

Take the car out late one night and drive it through third going ***** out.

Then you will know the safe shift points for your car.

Just my word of advice.

 

Crap top of 4'th what was that around 115 120? I know I have been over 110 in 4'th in mine.

 

I have taken 4th to approx. 125 with some room to spare. (not much)

Anything over 55 I would use 3rd. Under I would use 2nd. Good luck if you have to down shift into 1st, it doesn't like to do that, or atleast mine doesn't.

 

Better yet, go to the track. I took mine up to redline in first and second on an onramp to see where they were at. Third I pushed until I saw that I was over 90 with room to spare. The I slowed down to a safe freeway speed.

 

errr yea the responsible thing would be what cobalt Supercharged said... heh...

Umm... I did that too... and then went into 4th... errr.. not wise not wise at all.

At least I slowed down when I realised.. Was too busy watching the road/tach/road to worry about speedometer. I checked when my friend asked... ummm how fast are we going?

lol.

 

dont forget to match your rpms before downshifting to, or you could do damage

 

not entirely necessary on new cars since the tranny will synchronize for you. still good practice, but not exactly "damaging".

 

he means don't drop it into 3rd at 120. lol.

Syncronize this biatch!!!

 

probably true, I just made a habit of it because I burned through a clutch pretty fast in my 96 sunfire and I was told it was from inproper downshifting

 

Yea, I tried downshifting once and the car like.... jumped/jolted.

I can tho go from 5th straight to 3rd? Or so I need to go into 4th then 3rd?

 

you can skip shifts.... you dont need to take it to the track... you live in peotone you have plenty of empty country roads tow ork with. If you want I can just show you what to do...

 

2nd 110, 3rd 160, 4th 220, 5th 250 BAM... Im at work on time.

 

Well, I make it a point to match rev when downshofting if for no other reason than to smooth things out.

Getting into forth ( normal highway speeds ) from 5th is no biggie, but depending on your speed, 4th to 3rd can be a little jumpy, and same from 3rd to 2nd. I blip the throttle a touch just to get it smoother.

Yes, with today's synchros it's not necessary like it used to be. Same with "double clutching", but I like to keep the driveline from getting jarred as much as I can.

 

1st- 32mph
2nd- 64mph
3rd- 104mph
4th- 132mph
5th-157mph

I'm not sure how different my Getrag M86 ratios are from the other cobalts, but those are my observed shift points.... I also have a lockout in my tranny that wont permit a downshift to first unless you're moving under 28mph....

Hope i helped a little

 

Yours is very close to ours...I'm too lazy to look up the thread I posted in, and I get off work in 2 minutes, but ours are something like

37
70
100
132
169


Stage 2 is around

39
77
108
142
182

I could be off on some numbers.

 

I'm just too afraid to drop down to 3rd gear from 5th gear - I'm afraid like the trans will fall apart or something disastrous will happen.

I guess that when the time comes, I will figure it out.

 

if your goin 60..... put it in 3rd, then let out of th clutch slowly as you gradually give it gas...

 

....and where are you getting these numbers from, because our cars cant go morehtan 145 stock and there is no way in hell the stage 2 will let us go 182 without our cars blowing the **** up!

 

ina 2.2 its
1st-25
2nd-50
3rd-80
4th-governor

 

That is probably calculated assuming you have the power to go that fast before the 7K redline of stage2.....

 

Rev matching before downshifting just seems like good practice to me. Plus, bliping the throttle when you have an exhaust sounds quite cool