ok, i don't think anybody cares about this thread anymore but i did a smooth downshift accelleration tonight! rev-matched and all that stuff.. no jerk.. just neck snapping thrust.. yay for me! ... no? alright...

 

finally...great feeling

 

lol.. yeah, it was

 

now, is it just me, or does this car have MASSIVE torque steer.. like to the point where it's difficult to keep the car in control when punching it... i can even feel it through first AND second gear as high as 40mph when i'm punching it.. could there be something wrong? maybe my tires are sh*tty or something? they have decent treadwear on them, but they're cooper tires.. from what i understand they're not very good quality, but i don't know if they would have anything to do with these issues

also, this car is far choppier than my old car (2001 auto max) meaning that it hops out on me alot when accellerating going over bumps even in a stright line.. this leads me to believe that there's something wrong because my old car did not too this.. can bad tires or a faulty suspension component make the car more susceptible to torque steer and make it choppier over bumps? or is it just the nature of a more powerful FWD car?

 

I agree with what was said earlier. It will become second nature very soon. I also suggest practicing from a stopped position on a very slight downhill grade. It will make it much easier while you're getting a feel for the clutch.

P.S. If you're still looking I'm selling my 02 Max SE 6spd. I'm the original owner and it's in great shape.

 

where are you getting this done...i want to change my auto to 6spd...

 

thanx, but i already have a pretty nice 03 6 speed that i purchased in december.. i'm very happy with it.. and i've been driving it ever since then, so starting from a stop isn't an issue anymore, and i have a pretty good feel for the clutch in every day situations.. i'm still practicing launching and the 1-2 shift for racing situations though

 

where is who getting what done?

 

My thought on shifting: don't ever force anything. If the trans doesn't act like it wants to go into a particular gear at a given time, then it probably really doesn't need to go there.

The other thing I've noted is that on pretty much all factory 5 and 6-speed shifters, the natural rest point for the shifter in neutral is in the 3-4 gate. In other words, if you just use the tips of your fingers and shift straight forward or straight back from neutral, with no sideways motion at all, then you're going to be in 3rd or 4th gear, respectively. You have to pull the shifter toward you to get into 1 or 2, and you have to push it away from you to get into 5 (or 6.) So, when you're learning to shift, try shifting from 2-3 slowly with just the tip of your finger. You'll see/feel it pop over into the 3-4 gate by itself, and then you can just continue moving it up into 3 with just the one finger and no sideways input. This will help ensure that you don't grab a wrong gear. Don't ever manhandle the shifter. That's when you start missing shifts. Just be gentle and let it work for you.

I once started off from a dead stop on a level-ish road in a Datsun 620 pickup in 4th gear, using almost no gas pedal. Major clutch slippage

 

i know im in a little late but I wanted to comment on a few things...

Learning to drive stick is easy, specially if you already know how to drive... (auto) It took my friend 18 mins to learn after I have him a few lessons. Personally I love driving manual trannies, its like becoming one with the car... you actually feel it when its time to shift, and after a while it becomes second nature.

Take your time... learn the basics before you move into more aggressive shifting. Its not fun going from 3rd at Redline into 2nd by mistake

vinco has very good points... dont ever force any gears in... neutral is almost always between 3rd and 4th.

When you f@$# up, the clutch is your friend. Dont panic, let go of the gas petal and put the clutch in, dont jam the gears. Remember as long as the clutch is all the way in... technically the car is in neutral...

When racing 3k is the spot... with the right tires and air pressure it shouldnt spin too bad and it should give you a good launch without a bog!

Anyway from your previous posts it sounds to me like you pretty much got this pack already... have fun and be save out there...

D.

PS: here is a big NO-NO... Never drop the car in neutral at high speed for a long period of time. example... Redlining 4th or 5th gear and then dropping the car in neutral and just cruising until the car slows down... problem with that is the lost of oil pressure... it may result in a spun bearing... so always slow down in gear... to maintain proper oil pressure.

 

yeah... i never try to force gears... if i feel the shifter resisting, i know it's for a reason... either i don't have the clutch in all the way, or it's too low a gear for that speed.. and yeah.. i've f'd up a few times and quickly befriended the clutch.. lol.. the only thing i'm kinda struggling with now is getting smooth upshifts.. don't get me wrong, they have smoothed out tremendously since i first started driving a stick in december, but i want the shifts to be BUTTER smooth, like if my passengers closed their eyes, they would think it was an automatic.. i know it's attainable because i do it sometimes.. the only thing is doing it on a consistent basis...

crap, i didn't know that! i do that all the time! lol.. well not from aggressive revving and driving at high speeds at the same time.. if i do it, it will be zooming to about 6k in first gear, then putting it in neutral and cruising to a stop (the sound from the engine is just amazing doing that.. lol)... or normal driving (2k-3k rpms) in 4th, i'll put it in neutral and cruise to a stop if i see traffic is stopping... are those bad behaviors?

 

i think i'm pretty good with that.. the only thing i did do a couple times was switch to 3rd instead of 5th (thank God it was normal driving and not racing.. lol) because i didnt push my stick over far enough.. but that only happened maybe twice, and the car was forgiving of that mistake because i wasnt shifting aggressively at high speeds

i started off in third a couple times thinking i was in first

 

by the way, if anybody could point out habits that are hazardous to your clutch and would contribute to faster clutch wear, i would greatly appreciate it...

 

riding the clutch... that would wear it faster... the clutches on these cars will begin to engage with the smallest touch... so keep you foot off the clutch until its time to press it. But its not going to kill it from day to night... so if you are learning, is better to have a dead clutch than a dead tranny

 

ok.. i don't do that, so i'm in good shape there.. how about when starting from a stop, keeping the clutch right around the engagement point for a few seconds while pressing the gas down a little, kind of inching the car forward anticipating traffic to move?

 

hmm... try this... it may help you as it did for my friend Kenny...

when you are let say in 2nd gear... foot in the gas... as it gets time to go into 3rd, start pressing the clutch and at the same time start taking your foot off the gas petal... your feet should meet in the middle... meaning when you are half way in with the clutch you should be half way out with the gas... at that time you should move from 2nd to 3rd and it should go in pretty smooth... as your clutch should be all the way in and your gas petal all the way out... then do the opposite... gas in as clutch out... they should meet in the middle.

this goes a little against what I posted before about riding the clutch... as it wear the clutch a bit more... but shifting should be pretty damn smooth... once you get the feel of it... you will rev match so you dont have to use your clutch as much.

 

thats fine, but it wears the clutch a bit... but as long as you are not reving like crazy while holding the car with the clutch you should be ok... hell I do that all the time... hahaha in fact I used to hold my VR4 up hill using the clutch and gas petals only... no brake...

 

lol.. i do that sometimes when i don't feel like using the coordination to minimize rollback on a hill

 

after a while... you'll do it without thinking about it...

cool, just notice you are in philly... im in bordentown, nj about 25-30 mins... back in the day a group of guys from 3SI and I would take what we used to call the Airport Run... we would jump on our 3000s and Stealths and go from Cottman Ave to the philly airport then back... we used to love the tunes getting there... loud exhaust... bovs going off... good times...

 

Is rev-matching and double-clutching reserved for talented people or something? I have been driving stick for a while (had a 98 SE before my 02 SE) and have never been able to consistently downshift smoothly. I am ALWAYS missing the rev. Any hints?

Question to us 6 SPD owners ... is your gearbox very noisy? I swear people in China can probably hear my shift gates.

 

what you have to do is know what rpm the engine should be in what gear, and at what speed.. it sounds confusing, but just think about it like this.. shift into second gear, and go about 40mph.. keep it at that speed, and look at the engine rpms (they should be around 4k or so).. now you know that when you're going approx. 40mph, and want to downshift to accelerate, you need to press the clutch in, shift to 2nd gear, and rev the engine to approx. 4k rpms before you let the clutch out.. when the revs get to 4k.. keep your foot on the gas and let the clutch out, and it'll be smooth.. just get ready to jam that gas AFTER the clutch is out to really start moving

and do that experiment for any speed that you wanna downshift from, and you'll be able to estimate what rpm to rev the engine to before you let the clutch out for a smooth downshift.. for optimum acceleration, you want the engine to be somewhere between 3k and 5k rpms when you let the clutch out depending on speed

 

practice...practice...practice

thats normal...ES shift linkage bushings from Cattman help a lot

 

you dont need to know the exact RPM...anything is better than the idle RPM that will happen if you dont rev match. after down shifting and before you release the clutch, just blip the throttle. no reason to included the added pressure of trying to get it to a specific RPM.

 

my bad, where are you getting the tranny swap?

 

personally i thought learning to drive a stick was simple. i bought a 1995 2 door explorer sport when i was 16 (yes it was a 5 speed). i had an idea on how to drive a stick because its the same idea as a dirt bike or a quad....you have to give it a little gas and gradually let the clutch out. before i got my license, i practiced by just moving it back and forth in front of my house. then when i got good at that....i'd sneak it out when my parents were out.

its not that hard at all just stay away from stopping on big hills when you first start driving it or you could get yourself stuck! i've been there once or twice

 

Why would you need high oil pressure if you are slowing down in neutral?

 

i didn't get a tranny swap... i got a different car

 

yeah, for somebody who's new at it, that would be easier.. but the farther you are away from the correct rpm, the rougher the shift will be, right?

 

You don't, spun bearings USUALLY result from extreme metal to metal contact, usually from not enough oil-pressure at high rpm's, if your crankshaft is spinning at low rpm's the oil-pump is spinning at low rpms also but it still pushes enough volume to keep it lubricated at that rpm, basically it's bs and I'm having trouble explaining why, but just because your vehicle is traveling fast and your engine rpms are low it doesn't mean that your crank is spinning fast and your oil-pump is spinning slow, that wouldn't make much sense considering the oil-pump is driven off of the crank now would it.

I've yet to see a spun bearing on any nissan V6 anyways.

 

hmm, how can I explain this... your oil pressure goes hand in hand with your RPMs. the Higher the RPM the higher your oil pressure is. (in most cases 10 psi per Rpm) If you have an Oil Pressure gauge install in your car, you can see this. You will notice at idle (while warm) that your oil pressure is low. As you start to rev your engine oil pressure will go up.

So going back to what I said before. If you are lets say racing... and you are lets say doing 140 miles per hour, you have to be a dump *** to put your car into Neutral to slow down... what thats going to do is F*CK up your engine. Maybe you can get away with it a few times, but the fact is that it will damage your engine. Why? well simple... going back to my last paragraph, RPMs drop and so does Oil pressure. The way you avoid this, is even simpler, just hit the brakes to slow down in gear... once you get to a save speed level then its ok to change gears (down shift) and eventually come to a stop (neutral).

There... I think that makes sense. Now, im not 100% familiar with Maxima engines. But if Supras, 240sx, 300zx, 3000GTs, and a bunch other cars and engines have blown their engines this way... I would think a maxima would have the same problem... since I didnt know they where bulletproof!

D.

 

under normal conditions... you dont... see above post for extreme conditions...

 

sooner is right on this... thats really the easiest way to do it.. no need to rev match... put a simple blip of the throttle and it goes in like you where using KY

 

So, following your logic, we f^&*up our engine every time it's idling?

 

LOL, learn to read then check with me later... I SAID AT HIGH SPEED are you dump... I SAID IF YOU HAVE AN OIL GAUGE AND YOU IDLE YOU CAN SEE WHAT HAPPENS TO YOUR OIL PRESSURE WHEN YOU REV YOUR ENGINE!

i said that to prove a point... that oil pressure and your rpm go hand in hand... if your car is just sitting there nothing is going to happen..

 

I can't see the difference between idling sitting and idling moving (in "N").

 

dude, what im saying is that at high speed you need high oil pressure, if your rpms are high you will have the right pressure needed to maintain your engine. when you put it in neutral at high speed, oil pressure drops, to idle levels. And that may not be enough under extreme circumstances.

But dont believe me. Is your car... I seen my share of blown engines due to poor oil pressure. And I have personally witness an engine blowing up due to someone putting the car into neutral and riding it out to slow down while doing 140mph (not a maxima)... perhaps dropping the car into neutral at 50 is no big deal... but my point is that at HIGH SPEEDs its very bad... thats all...

D.

 

Do you realize that rolling in neutral and your car at idle is the same as if you are stopped and in neutral? I could see if you would be rolling at say 130 and having your engine at idle and then jam it in gear there may be a possibility of doing something(most likely putting it in a gear to low) but rolling with the car in neutral will do no damage. You should rethink your logic and read KRRZ350 post above.

 

damn all you manual drivers are soo lucky!!!my mom woudnt let me get a manual car so i have to drive an i30. heavy and boring but very handsome and luxorious tho. lol i really really wanna a manual. anybody in ny area wanna give a young guy a chance to feel a manual maxima??

p.s. i've never driven a manual but i will dis summer wen i go visit my bro.

 

I have rethink my logic... hell I argue this about 2 years ago using KRRs logic and what you just stated. But when my buddy blew his engine by just coasting in neutral after racing a cobra then I changed my point of view. Then after doing some more research on it, I found a couple of guys on the supra forum that had the same thing happen to them. Then the question was asked on the 3000gt forum and found the same thing. I think there is a vid of a guy racing a busa that spun a bearing after he popped the car in neutral at 200 mph just to coast. Maybe im wrong and what happen to those guys had nothing to do with this... but its funny how all of them did the same thing... But the bottom line is... why take the chance? I'm not sure how much does it cost to rebuild a VQ engine... but im sure is not cheap even if you do your own work.

D.

 

where you at?