re: shifting

[Joe Elliott <jee@domain.elided>]

At 8:40 PM +0000 8/8/02, alfa-digest wrote:
> I fall more in love with my Spider each day that I drive it, I'd drop a
> Japanese tranny in there in a heartbeat.
And then you can wear out your gears and be left at the side of the 
road, rather than wearing out your synchros and having a hard time 
downshifting.

To each his own.

Joe Elliott
'82 GTV6

PS>  FWIW, I do have a friend with a '91 Eclipse with shot 1st and 
2nd gear synchros (~100k mi.).

PPS> Although at first I couldn't think of any time that I downshift 
while intending to maintain speed, I realized that I do it almost 
everyday when I'm caught behind slowpokes on the way home from work, 
in anticipation of the long straight where I pass them (the "Darrtown 
Straight" on Rt. 177 to anyone who knows me).  So I tried the Fred 
Shifting today.  Contrary to my previous attempts to heel & toe w/out 
double-clutching (you just can't break some habits) this worked very 
well from 5th to 4th (I don't know whether the ratios are supposed to 
be that f'ing close on an '84 box or if the one APE sold me had been 
modified), but the revs were't quite high enough when I let out the 
clutch for the 4th to 3rd change.  But if I was fortunate enough to 
have a gearbox in 100% condition as opposed to a marginal one bought 
from APE for $350, (this technique would never work for 2nd gear on 
my car, except maybe at low speeds, due to marginal synchromesh on 
that gear), I might be tempted to try this more often.  Fred is 
generally correct, so it may be possible that the synchros will last 
the lifetime of the car if not shifted abusively, but I refuse to 
believe that any friction mechanism can be used without wearing at 
all.  That's just my 40 lira of basic physics, YMMV.
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