i was wondering...

does agressive gear shifting damage your transmission in a manual? by that i dont mean waiting til you hit 5k+ rpms before movin to the next gear, but if you shift from 2nd to 3rd in 0.0036 secs (i made that up, but you get my point). ive got friends who say they take their time moving their shifter from gear to gear 'cause they dont wanna hurt the tranny, and others who just slam it from a gear to the next 'cause they dont believe it'll do much harm. i personally am somewhere inbetween. i cant deny the fact that i love a nice, clean *snick* everytime i shift... >:]

 

slamming gears is bad for your tranny...just make the shifting smooth and crisp...taking too long will have you riding your clutch or dropping below the power band

 

yea, slamming is bad. you just want to put enuf ""flick" to the shift knob so it'll pop right into the next gear.

a short shifter in my car made me prevent those types of things...shift fast and smooth.

 

Slamming the gears is not going to make you go any faster. I wouldn't do it to my car but I dont think it will hurt as much as revving the engine and popping the clutch out.

 

mm, true that...

oh, and on another note, someone also once told me that resting your hand on the shifter of automatics can put unnecssary (and i guess unhealthy) pressure on your tranny, too. is that made up? or is there some truth to that...

 

just resting your hand? or shifting through the gears.

The only thing that resting your hand on the shifter will unnecessarily wear is the shifter itself. The leather, steel or plastic, I mean :P

 

BS...on a automatic. On newer automatics...the shifting is almost completely electronic anyway. I'm not totally sure if there even is a mechanical linkage to the tranny other than for park and possbily neautral and reverse.

Could cause some wear on a manual however. The shift fork may be rubbing on the gear very slightly. But overall it shouldn't do anything.

As for shifitng fast... if the clutch is fully engaged or if the RPM's are matched perfectly, no additonal wear... but overall not a great idea. I doubt your pushign in teh clutch that fast... which means your partly doing clutchless shifting. No a good idea unless it's a sequential geabox...your is not.

 

only true for manual transmission...you are putting pressure and forcing the shifter to be in a different resting position from where it wants to be...people doing this while on the highway is the result of many 5th gear pop out problems

 

actually, short shifters make it easier to "slam" the tranny into gear. the shifter is shorter, so your hand doesn't have to move it as far to shift from gear to gear, which means you can do it much, much faster (which is the point of a short shifter to begin with). an exaggerated example would be like comparing the shifter on a school bus to the shifter on a regular car. you can shift much faster on a car. easier to shift faster = easier to do harm to the transmission. you aren't necessarily messing with your transmission every time you shift with a short shifter, it's just *easier* to.

i try to be careful and not shift real fast with my short shifter. it doesn't need to be lightning fast for regular driving anyway..

 

thats odd, i can actually downshift into 2nd now with the short shifter. with the regular shifter, i would have to force it into gear. there is also less grinding with my short shifter. overall, i think its better for me.