As a learner I've been watching many videos on gear changing down as this is something I'm struggling with in my practice but your video has made more sense to me than most, thank you!
This is different than what my Irish instructor teaches me. He asks me to always try to downshift and take advantage of engine braking. Anticipate early and downshift to take some stress off the brakes. It's a lot of (possibly unnecessary) clutch work, going from 4th to 3rd to 2nd before coming to a stop, but that gives you more control over your vehicle and helps braking better. He asks me to only use block change when there is not enough time, but always try and downshift early when slowing down the car. I don't know which approach is better, but my Irish instructor definitely teaches differently.
Hello my name is Gabriel I am 57 and learning to drive, I have found your videos very helpful thank you so much I have covered 30 hours of lessons, I can drive but need lots of practicing, your videos are very helpful, thank you
Holy shit, I've been asking my instructor about this for about 5 lessons now, and he keeps asking me the same thing... honestly, if I knew I wouldn't have asked him. So thank you!!!
This is by far the best downshifting video helped me to where I can finally put my car in 2nd and first gear without having to worry about my transmission
Excellent video. I have been driving for many years and I normally use the gears to slow the car down and I now understand fully why it is not necessary to do so. Very informative. Thanks
Thanks for your reply. New brake pads are definitely cheaper than a new gear box so thats good advice. My dad had concerns about my sister taking recent driving lessons with an instructor who was teaching this very tecnique and i have to admit i thought he was right at the time. Having read more about this now and seeing as car braking systems are so much better than they used to be in the past i can now see the benefits of of this practice. Time to teach this old dog some new tricks ;-)
Hello, thank you soooooooooooooo much for sharing this wonderful video with practical feet motion demonstration. One of the best video on this topic. Greets from Germany!!!!
This was a bit fast but most certainly better than anything I have heard from my instructor. Perhaps it's because he has not sat in the car to demo for this long. Most of the time I am on the wheel. Thanks for this once more. Will watch it a few time before my test.
Thank you so much for this video. I'm an old school driver from years back when we were taught to change down gear alot to slow the car as well as braking. I have a new car on order and was so worried about damaging the transmission by unnecessary gear down shifting that i just had to watch and learn as you showed us. I understand that changing down on a steep hill is good though but for my normal driving i think i needed to learn some new techniques. The only cars i have driven in the last 10 years were automatics so i never had to worry about manual gear changing but this one will be a manual so i feel this will be extremely helpful. Many thanks for your help. Also being able to watch what was going on when you were slowing down made it all so clear. Hopefully i can put all this useful information into practice and not scare everyone with my abrupt gear changes as i did on my earlier test drives with the dealers...lol!
Marty Hopkirk I'm glad my video helped. There's always debate over whether coming down the gears is better but it's unnecessary in many cases. People worry about coasting (driving with the clutch down) and insist on being in a gear at all times but the fact is that it actually often makes very little difference. The only time i go down the gears is on steep downhills where it certainly helps. The best way i ever heard it explained was when someone said "New brakes cost less than a new gearbox".
The only real reason why gears are shifted up or down is to ensure sufficient power to maintain speed or accelerate when the gas is pressed. Slowing all the way down to a stop needs no engine power and thus there's no need to downshift at all; just clutch in when the car feels a tinge of wobble as it slows down.
With so many gears how do downshift from 6th to 3 quickly enough when you are on a highway? I had trouble trying to slow down the car when I was in 5th gear since downshifting took longer than upshifting. Do you just slow the car down to a suitable gear and then shift from 5th to 3rd? In other words if I'm going at 120km/h and need to slow down to 60m/h what is the proper way to do it.?
You can shift from 6 to 3 fairly quickly , let's say you're going in 6th gear alright then there's an speed bump coming or you're just rapidly slowing down coz of various situations, so you are going in 6th and rapidly slowing down at that time you could put in neutral and switch to 3 or 4 or 2. remember you can do this anytime BUT YOU'LL HAVE TO BE IN THAT SPEED WHICH SUITS THE GEAR YOU'RE SWITCHING ,makes sense ?
What about Rev matching when downshifting? Not sure if that's what it is called in the UK. Any thoughts on that or is it still better to just slowly release the clutch when downshifting??
I guess your instructor might be saying this because, if you have a heavy car with a medium size engine (2litre Audi a6/8,Mercedes S class etc.) you won't be able to come to a near stop in 3rd/4th/5th/6thetc gear, especially if they are hybrids. Those heavy sedans can have smaller engines as they use the battery power for acceleration, and then use the speed of the car to recharge the battery through regenerative breaking. The engine will stall in a higher gear slowing downas there isn't enough momentum keeping the cyclinders turning, so most people will a) coast the last bit either with clutch or taking the car out of gear or b) downshift to second gear, maybe even first before the complete stop, which is what you'd have to do in your test when driving such a car... However, I don't think anybody will do their driving test in a big sedan so it's a bit of a mute point. My parents have a BMW 5 series 2litre hybrid which, if you got some stuff in the trunk + people in the car has to be downshifted to first gear when coming to a stop. The little bit of momentum you still have when that heavy car slows down in ie 3rd gear and which keeps the engine from stalling gets quickly used to recharge the battery... The other problem is, if you have a car with a big engine relative to its size (VW 2lt TDI comes to mind...) the engine is often too powerful without any weight to slow it down so it can't physicially slow down in a high gear. For example if you are in 3rd gear and take your foot of the gas pedal it will just keep going at 20 mph and never slow down beyond that, so you have to break and downshift (as you would stall otherwise). The car I learned in (VW polo) could easily slow down in 4th gear and not stall until pretty much stopped and I suspect most of the small cars with small engines behave like that. TLDR: yes it depends on the car.
