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How to downshift in a manual. How to Drive a Manual Vehicle With Down Shifting - Beginners Guide 

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Cannot find your purchased courses? Click here to Login! How to Downshift a Manual Car Correctly. These require huge amounts of practice to master and do well. Done improperly these driving techniques will wear out your clutch and drivetrain. When the vehicle comes to a complete stop shift back to first gear.

OR shift to the appropriate gear for the speed you're travelling. Also, braking systems are divided into 2 independent subsystems.

If one fails, the other will continue to work normally. Hi there smart drivers, Rick with Smart Drive Test talking to you today about downshifting and that you shouldn't do it. Which actually is not true, because on skid pads they've done tests and shown that if you lock up the back wheels on slippery conditions you could lose control of the vehicle. So when you're down shifting, you could lock up the back wheels, lose control, crash into a tree and die in a fiery inferno.

But some years ago somebody asked me that in a big truck - why was I downshifting when I was just using fuel? Because on a big truck, you have to match rev - you have to rev the motor up to match the gear when you go down to the lower gear. So what we're going to do today, we're going to go for drive and show you how to drive a manual transmission without downshifting.

Now just let me clarify on one point: if you're going down long downgrades, yes you do need to downshift and you need the engine braking to assist in bringing that vehicle down the steep long downgrade. And racing, yes they do downshift so they can shoot out of the corner, because they're accelerating harder in a lower gear.

We're not talking about either one of those things - we're NOT talking about braking on long downgrades and we're NOT talking about downshifting for the purpose of racing and shooting out the corner on the other side. This information is about everyday driving in a manual car. It's neither for downhill braking nor racing. Welcome back, Rick with Smart Drive Test talking to you today about downshifting and that for most everyday driving you shouldn't do it, regardless of whether you're in a truck, car, light truck, motorcycle, or a bus.

And at the end of the day in a big truck, if you're down shifting every time that you're coming to a stop, you are going to be beat up and worn out - just use the brakes. And actually what we're going to do here today we're going to go for drive and just show you how to use the brakes and how to shift a manual transmission without downshifting.

Because especially on slippery conditions like today, you are probably going to risk losing control of the vehicle. If you downshift--and I know there's going to be a lot of people out there who are bristling and I had the same reaction when somebody said that to me. The reason that we teach you to downshift for the purposes of a road test is to demonstrate you have due care and control of the vehicle. That when you go around the corner, you're not going to stall and stop the vehicle because you can't find the correct gear for the speed the vehicle is travelling.

What downshifting teaches you for the purposes of a road test is which gear is appropriate for the speed that the vehicle is traveling. So therefore, if you go around the corner you slow down to 20 kilometers an hour or 15 miles an hour you know that the vehicle is probably either going to go into second gear or third gear, depending on the gearing in the transmission. But most of the time, to go around the corner on the right-hand turn, you're going to shift down to second gear in a 5-speed transmission.

And you need to know that, and you're going to learn that during training when your preparing for a road test. The other problem with that however, is that when we teach students to downshift, they think they have to downshift all the time. We continue to downshift because in the s--a long long, long time ago when Grandpa drove cars--the brakes were unreliable.

The problem with that is that we still continue to do it today thinking that brakes are not reliable. If you open the cover of the master cylinder - underneath the in the engine compartment there, you'll notice that there's two chambers in there.

The braking system on every vehicle regardless of whether it's air brakes or whether it's hydraulic brakes is divided into two independent subsystems.

So if one braking system fails--the front brakes on your vehicle fail--the ones on the rear are still going to work. And as well, on slippery conditions you're going to have much more control if you just use the brakes as opposed to shifting down.

So again, downshifting for everyday driving - don't do it, it's just a waste of time. But if you are going down long steep downgrades, and especially the bigger the vehicle, you're going to need that extra braking power from the engine. So we're going to go for a little drive here just show you how I drive my 5-speed manual in the snow. And just to give you some idea how to do this - just using the brakes on a 5-speed transmission, we're going to hook up the cameras, go for a drive. You could see there on the slippery conditions that as soon as I shifted into second gear, the tires started to grab and get traction.

As soon as I shift into second gear, you can see here on the tachometer that I'm shifting into second and now I'm in 3rd gear. So I don't have to slow down to 30kph 20mph , I only have to slow down to 50 kilometers an hour 30mph.

I'm just below 50kph 30mph for both hands on the steering wheel keeping good control of the vehicle because I'm in the snow here. And i'm going to make the left-hand turn here and I'm going uphill here so I can just use the hill to slow down. You can see that the wheels are spinning in second gear - so as soon as I shift the third it gets traction again. And I get off here and the road is not plowed and I put it back into third gear to get more traction.

Again I'm staying near the center of the road because there's people walking around shovelling their driveways and those types of things. I'm going slow and travelling 40 kilometers an hour less than 40 kilometers an hour which for you in the states would be about 20 miles an hour. I shift quickly into second because I'm going to get more traction; even with my steel studded snow tires on the truck.

No vehicles coming, and again the rear end starts to kick around because the tires are spinning as I'm in second gear. Now I'm going to get up here and I'm going to get on a bit of a slippery section and I'm going to show you that downshifting will potentially cause you to do damage to the drivetrain over a long period of time. That you're going to do undo damage to the drivetrain and eventually what you're going to end up doing is you're getting up changing out the clutch, which any of you have had to do a clutch job, you know that it's anywhere from a thousand to five thousand dollars to change out the clutch.

You saw that it revved down quite a bit there on the tachometer - I just kept my foot on the throttle and the engine climbed back up by itself because it's in third gear. And I just shift to fourth gear there and actually I'm doing 50 kilometers an hour and i'm going to show you how to do this. And I'm going to to skip here - I'm actually going to go down to second gear and I'll show you this. And one of my pet peeves is over revving the engine, so there's really no need for you to have in third gear here.

And now I'm just kind of working the steering wheel to go around this corner on the slippery conditions here. And I'm just keeping my foot off the throttle and you can see it's revving up and I am using the engine braking to go down that hill a little bit.

I'm not actually shifting down or shifting up and because you're on compromised conditions, I just want to use gentle, easy, very subtle touches on the controls. Because in compromised conditions like this, when it's slippery you don't want to brake and steer at the same time. You want to have the vehicle in the gear that you need to go around the corner before you start turning the steering wheel.

Because if you're trying to steer and shift and brake all at the same time, especially in the wintertime as it is right now, you are probably going to end up going straight through the intersection. It comes right down and I'm in second gear and I can just go around the corner And again, on a manual transmission, the equation for fuel economy is the highest gear for the lowest rev. So the faster you can move through the gears when you're accelerating, the better fuel economy you're going to get.

Because you're going to be able to get into your tallest gear more quickly, and you're going to bring your revs down and you're going to get better fuel mileage.

You're going to get better fuel economy because the engine is not working as hard and it's going faster. So you want to try and move through the gears as quickly as possible, and that's regardless of whether you're driving a five-speed, six speed, or driving a 9, 10, 13, 18, or 15 speed. That equation works for all manual transmissions: the highest gear for the lowest rev - it's that simple.

And for those truck drivers and professional drivers watching this video, there are companies that do pay you a fuel bonus. So if you work through the gears faster, you're going to make more money because you're going to get that fuel bonus. So I'm going downhill here you can see i'm just using the brakes and I'm not changing any gears or pushing the clutch in. I'm going to shift down to second gear because I'm slowing right down and around the corner nice and easy.

Don't touch the clutch and I'm in second gear, so i can let the RPM come down quite low and actually have to come to a stop here so I push the clutch in. If you're taking a road test on a manual transmission--this may not be true in the UK United Kingdom or Europe-- you are not required to downshift.

You are required to show that you can shift down into a gear--a lower gear--to go around a corner that you're not going to lose momentum or stall the vehicle. Now I may stand corrected on that point in Europe - they may be require you to downshift, but I'm not aware of that criteria for the purposes of a road test. They simply want to see that you can keep the vehicle moving around the corner; that you can shift down to the appropriate gear so you're not going to stall the vehicle or bring the vehicle to a stop.

We see that, and I just slow down and right now I push the clutch in just before I'm about to come to a stop. And now again we can see that all the cars are bunched up in front of us, which means they're slowing down in preparation for that red light that you can see up in the distance there. And I'm just maintaining my gap in front of me between the vehicles and myself here in front of me and I'm not downshifting.

And if I just want to come to a stop, which I'm going to have to here momentarily, then I just work the throttle. And I change down into second gear because I may or may not have to come to a complete stop, which I don't. If you look in the engine compartment directly here in front of the steering wheel you'll find the master cylinder. Air brake systems are the same: there a dual air brake system, so if one side fails, the other side will continue to work normally; therefore, brakes will not fail.

And since the s, advances in technology and component parts that make up the braking system are much more reliable. And I would argue that in this day and age, brakes are not going to fail at all.

As well, we have such a large generation overlap, that this driving technique of downshifting to save the brakes has been passed on from generation to generation - grandparents to parents to children and sometimes that overlap is 10, 20 sometimes 30 or 40 years in really long cases. So this has been passed down from generation to generation and we haven't revisited this, even though advances in technology - automotive technology have improved and created braking systems that will not fail.

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Therefore because of that feature in automatic transmissions, all the engineers in the world can't be wrong in terms of downshifting. Finally if you are down shifting and using the drivetrain to slow the vehicle, it's going to cost you a lot of money over time because even if you match rev, you're never going to do it perfectly. And what happens is that the tires are spinning at a very fast speed, you rev the motor up and you put these two things together.

You're never going to get a perfect match on that unless you're a professional race car driver and you're never going to get a perfect match on that and you're going to shock the drivetrain. And even in a big truck, why would you use a thirty thousand dollar drivetrain to save two-thousand-dollar brakes.