How To Double Clutch
[ April 6th, 2008 ] By: Charles Smith Posted in » How To
Performing the Double Clutch
- Clutch in
- Shift gear selector to Neutral
- Clutch out
- ‘Blip’ throttle
- Clutch in
- Shift gear selector to lower gear
- Clutch out
The hardest part of those 7 steps is figuring out how much to raise the engine revs in step 5. It all depends on how fast you’re going and your transmission’s gearing. In my WRX I’ve noticed it is about 2-2.5k RPM increase during a downshift.
Don’t worry about how quickly you’re double clutching, speed comes with practice what matters is smoothness.
Why Double Clutch?
Double clutching was once a required technique. It was used to sync the engine and transmission speed. In older cars without double clutching you were unable to shift (you even had to double clutch to up shift). However, in new transmissions synchromesh gears do most of that work. While the synchromesh gears reduce the need for double clutching, they don’t handle the large changes in speed that go with down shifts very well. Double clutching makes the downshifts smoother and saves wear on the transmission by reducing the amount of work done by the synchromesh units. So go out and practice a double clutch down shift (in a safe place), it’ll save you precious money on your transmission.
Here’s the video version: How To Double Clutch: The Video.
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June 19th, 2008 at 9:16 am
With modern synchromesh transmissions, is it not possible to single-clutch with a throttle blip while the clutch is in before gear change?
Does this promote premature clutch wear?
Basically:
Clutch in
Blip throttle
Gear select
Clutch out
Just wondering - great site, BTW… thanks for taking the time to share your experience.
June 19th, 2008 at 8:18 pm
It is possible to single-clutch with a throttle blip and that is perfectly acceptable. That is how I tend to heel-toe downshift. It doesnt promote premature clutch wear as modern synchromesh transmissions are designed for single clutch downshifts.
I have found, when driving my car, that double clutch downshifts are a lot smoother and fun to do. Thanks for enjoying the site :)
January 24th, 2010 at 12:04 am
Wasn’t Heel and Toe downshift save all this trouble than doing a Double Clutch downshift? Can explain?
August 1st, 2010 at 7:52 am
I could smell a review a mile away that has been distributed just to get traffic back to the persons web site. The question I have though is must you release them or not? I tend to just publish everything except the ones that link increased than once