Turbo_Steve

I'm giving it death in first gear, drop the clutch, into second gear, raise the clutch as I push my foot hard on the accelerator.

As you reach the bite point, the car blisters forward, and there is an almighty clunk from the gearbox/drivetrain and you passenger says "OOoow...that's gotta cost money"

Do I need to be more gentle?
(Stop fighting the car and be smooth etc etc)

WREXY

You do need to be more gentle. You will get quicker at changing and letting that clutch out more gently with time and practice. Start off slow and then slowly build up your speed. You do have to be gentle though. I'm sure that clunk, harsh jerk, is no good for it. I get it occasionally, but I'm getting better at avoiding it.

Cheers,

Wrexy

Turbo_Steve

I suppose.

It's...well....have to change gear fast! FAST! FAST! heh heh...

I have taken out both previous owners of the car who "Did not know it would go THIS quick".

But I guess you are right. -sigh-
back to square one, I suppose...

shunty

I had this big_clunk sound for the fist time this mornin, goin to work. I have just had the engine uprated & I sh*t myself when I heard the noise.....checked the road behind for "bits of car" glad to say none there, only distant image of car that tried to race me from the lights, beemer 328i

Will try to ease the clutch out from now on, learning to cope with the new power has it's drawbacks

shunty

AJbaseBloke

Ummm...try matching revs to gearing.

Learn the drop off gear to gear at various engine speeds - as WREXY says, start slow - then the more you drive the cars, you'll gradually get the timing down pat!!

Try it going up and down the box, too.

Slamming things puts a ton of stress on all sorts of bits - not the just the box.

Enjoy - smoooothly!

Turbo_Steve

My previous car was a 1.6 Company Tigra........You don't think I learnt to shift gears that quick in my OWN car do you? lol

I hated that dumb hairdressers car so much I stacked it into a brick building at 75mph in the end. HATEFUL car...

And I know what you mean about the fast gear change......have won several traffic light grand prix with that gearchange......have timed it at santapod....my gearchange is worth roughly 0.6 seconds on a quarter mile...

That's 20bhp or so between friends :-)

catflap

Does letting the clutch out slowly burn it out more, only saying this as trying a rapid standing start (on private road) and feeding clutch out to provide quick and smooth take off, the smell was god awful (not good, not good at all)

Are the clutches a little jerky? (it is in comparison to my zantia, never get any passenger boble LOL technical term that for passengers jerking back and forth on gear change)

IWatkins

That sound is generally considered to be the whole of your runing gear getting a sudden hit of power after being unloaded (ish) during the gear change. (This assumes the big clunk you are hearing is the same).

The faster you do this, generally the harder the whack to the drive shafts, bearings, diffs etc.

Obviously, wear and tear increases. However, on the flip side, it means you get power down onto the road quicker too

This is why rally teams and other motorsport teams spend a lot of time perfecting semi automatic gear boxes and active diffs etc. I.e. the faster you can change gear, the less time you are not driving the car forward which is obviously a good thing.

Just listen to how quickly a modern WRC car or even an F1 car changes gear, there is simply no pause in the noise (Mind you, not as quick as I change gear in Avis hire cars )

Cheers

Ian