I'm somewhat new to this car stuff, and am not very good with all the terms. I see a lot of people talking about "heel-toe" shifting. What is it, and how is it different from normal shifting?

 

Oops, meant to put this in Off-Topic...please move me over!

 

Heal toe driving is when you use your right foot heal to press on the gas pedal while using your right foot toe to press on brake, while using your left foot to push the clutch. If you ever watch rally racing on Speedvision, you'll notice that the in the pedal view, you see the driver's right foot turned in about 45 degrees, its because he's heel-toeing it. This is a technique generally used in cornering. The idea is that if you can blip the throttle to match the RPMs for the next gear down, you can downshift without the jerk or clutch feather, maintaining the smoothness of the cornering transistion so that you can remain ever so close to that traction point of no return.

With some aftermarket pedal covers, I can manage a heal toe shift using the inside/outside of my right foot instead of the heal and toe.

Hope that was clear enough.

 

www.turnfast.com

 

That's the website where I figured out what it was. Couldn't remember what it was though. Very good site!

 

I have always thought of Heel-Toe shifting is the same as Double Clutching.

The process described in the above link you "blip" the engine with the Clutch Engaged (pressed in). In double clutching it is Heel-Toe but you shift into Neutral release clutch, blip the engine, re-engage clutch, shift into gear and release clutch

See

Link 1

or

Link 2

? is which is better. I am working on Double Clutching (need a bigger gas pedal).

David

 

Dude, heel-toe is awesome. It saves you SOOO much time when racing a road course or auto-X. Once you get used to it, it's like 2nd nature and it keeps you in the powerband all the time.

stupid *** n00bs like protege menace say it's useless

But it's a 'real' racing technique, when they designed the RX-7 they quote: "Assuming the driver has preformed a heel-toe downshift, the rear suspension adjusts toe control at the first sign of lateral force (rear steer)..." Lemans drivers do it too.

Here is how I do it....

Entering a tight corner in say... 3rd gear.. brake BEFORE the turn.. when at around 5000RPMs I hit the clutch in, hit the brakes and blip the throttle up to around 6500, put shifter in 2nd and let clutch out. If done nicely I land into 2nd @ 6200 RPMs. Then I take the turn at high RPMs in a low gear and just after the apex floor it and you're already getting maximum acceleration out of the corner, get some oversteer and it's all good . hehe then it's cake from there, hit 8K BUZZ shift .

Sometimes you mess up and jerk the car, this upsets the balance through the corner and instead of being neautral, you get understeer which is BAD.

Oh, this is for a RWD car, I dunno about the prots but I'm sure it's similar if you can keep the car balanced.

 

can someone explain " double clutching " to me in short terms like in a simpler fashion lol thanks. i never understood what that meant.

 

In it's very simplest form:

Double clutch:
- depress clutch pedal
- take car out of gear
- release clutch pedal
- depress clutch pedal
- engage the next gear (up or down)
- release clutch pedal

you go through two whole motions of the clutch per shift (hence the name).

The reason that it is usually done is when you have a transmission that does not have synchronizers (pretty much any modern transmission will have synchronizers today) and by using a double clutch sequence you allow the transmission to be better matched to the engine speed and thus allow gear enagement.

Hope that helps...

 

Double clutching is kind of stupid, at least now. Way back in the day when transmissions didn't have synchros and all that good stuff you actually had to release the clutch pedal in neutral and then engage it again and go to your next gear. So a shift from 1 to 2 would look like this if you double clutched:

Press clutch
Move stick from 1 to neutral
Release clutch
Press clutch
Move stick from neutral to 2

Needless to say in our modern times it is not really used anymore except on more primitive racing transmissions or old cars.

The only technique you may want to learn other than heel & toe is speed shifting. THIS IS VERY DANGEROUS TO YOUR TRANSMISSION! Speed shifting involves shifting without using the clutch. You pop the tranny out of gear, blip the throttle to rev-match, and then shove that sucker back in. A perfectly executed speed shift will let you pop it into gear easily, any strong resistance and you are doing it wrong. Once again not using the clutch is very hard on a lot of components and I do not recommend you try and learn this on your car.

Edit: Oopssss. Beat me to it. I'll go ahead and leave it though.

 

double clutchin is that simple huh? thanks lol i knew it had to do with clutchin twice but didnt understand lol.

 

double clutching can also make your accelerate faster, when you shift from 1-2 you normal catch your engine droping in RPMS so when you engage the clutch the engine has to stop droping in RPMS and start reving, when you double clutch you can catch your engine reving up and this is how you make your tires squeal in 2nd, it'll give you a little bit of a jolt (force you back in your seat) and it should shave off some time too
________
HONDA CBR125R

 

heel-toe:
brake (with right toe)
disengage clutch (still on brake)
rev and shift (with right heel, still on brake)
engage clutch (depends on situation, brake or no brake)

double clutch (down shift):
disengage clutch
shift to N
engage clutch
rev
disengage clutch
shift to lower gear
engagage clutch

I find heel-toe the easiest.

 

Do you guys find heal-toe downshifting to be hard on the stock pedals? My brake pedal is much higher than the gas and even if I press the brake pedal w/ my toe, my heal still can't reach the gas pedal. I think my brakes are too new to try this. It engages w/ a little tap on the pedal.

 

I've tried it a few times on mine and haven't really cared for the placement but it is not too bad, I can make it work. I don't like the way the accelerator is placed.

I can actually get one half of my foot on the brake and one half on the accelerator and do it like that. Not proper technique but it works and I don't really let off the brake when I do it.