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How do I shift without the clutch?

 
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GTFO noob, dont be a dumbass, use your clutch

 
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disengage the shift lock, then you can have at it.

 
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LOL - straight off the top rope Adam!

 
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you could try driving an auto-matic...
is this a serious question

 
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Give it a quick jab and ignore all the grinding noise, don't mind the smell, it's normal.

 
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There is a sweet spot in the RPM range that allows you to put the car in gear with no clutch. The spot is somewhere in the lower rpm ranges. The safest way to do it I guess would be to put the clutch in and put a little bit of pressure on the shifter headed towards the next gear. As your RPMS slowly go down the shifter will engage the next gear.

But, be like everyone else and use your clutch. Its better for your car.

 
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This is a serious question. I just was curious about it even though I don't want to do it on my car, kind of like why I learned how to hotwire a car even though I'm going to try it on mine.

Anyway, I know it has to do with finding the right RPM ranges for the particular vehicle. I wasn't sure if there was any other tricks to it.

 
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Why would you want to do that?

 
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If my clutch ever went out I'd still be able to drive my car to the shop. It's also faster.

 
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If your clutch went out it would probably slip and your car still wouldn't go anywhere when you hit the gas. If you want to test it, get your car into third gear at low RPM and lightly pull towards you on the shifter as you increase RPM. Pull very lightly and you'll start to feel the shifter move towards you a bit and if you pull slightly harder it'll pop into neutral. This can all be done with one finger, there's very little force required. I would also suggest against it, especially trying to get it into gear right away. It will kill your gearbox.

 
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Lol my brother in law drives his car without the clutch all the time. I still wont do it in my car but if you do it correctly your tranny will supposebly last just as long. He has done it in my car before but that was about the only time he has drove my car. He also said he used to do it in his older honda with no problems.

Now when it comes to actually doing it, I dont know the trick, I just know its at a certain rpm range and that you have to do it quickly.

 
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for my car the sweet spot is around 2.5k to 3.3k or so rpm's... what i do is get it up to that rpm try to pull it out slowly out of gear then keep it reved up to about 2.5k or so and shift into the next gear... i got a little grinding at first but not anymore now that i know where to do it at... =\ o yah and i have a 96 ex

 
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why?

 
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My first car was a '64 VW Beetle with 112K miles on it. I paid $150 for it from my girlfriends Dad in 1970 when I was 17. Naturally it needed some work and it was on this car (and several others along the way) that I lost my fear of tearing into things to find out how they work, and fix them.

The forked lever that held the throw-out bearing snapped and I suddenly had no clutch about 10 miles from home. I found that if I pushed the car to get it moving I was able to get it into 1st gear without grinding, then up and downshift thru the gears smoothly all the way home.

I've tried it occasionally thru the years just for the hell of it and it works on just about any of the modern syncro-mesh transmissions (when I worked for a landscape outfit back in the early 70s we had an old Ford dump truck (non-syncro-mesh) that you had to double-clutch to downshift into first or it would grind). So I suggest to the know-it-all nay-sayers that the only stupid questions are the ones that go unasked.

 
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Ghetto way to start your car at a red light if your clutch won't engage.

1. Stop at light.
2. Shut your car off... damn there go the tweets... good song too.
3. Wait for the light to go green.
4. Put the car in first gear.
5. Start the summabitch and get ready for a bumpy ride.
6. Look to your right and realize the high school kids are laughing... that's okay, at least you have a car.
7. Hope the next set of lights is green.

 
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Its possible to shift without your clutch. Don't do it though.

 
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I recommend not shifting without the clutch. Its asking for trouble and your shifting is faster when you use it.

 
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All right, that's enough fail for this thread. This is a really simple question with a very straightforward answer.

1. No, there is no "sweet spot" low in the revs. There's no static "sweet spot" 2. period.
3. No, shifting without the clutch does not damage the transmission if done correctly.
4. No, it is not correct to pull it slowly out of gear, as someone said. It's a quick and light movement. If you do it correctly, it should come out of and go into gear more easily than if you shift conventionally with the clutch.

A somewhat simplified explanation of why and how this works: When you shift, the engine and transmission spin at different speeds. And the input and the output shaft also spin at different speeds, as do the related rings and collars (look up the diagram of a manual transmission on www.howstuffworks.com if you want to see what I'm talking about. A synchronizer allows the ring, which is fixed to the shaft, to engage smoothly with the dog teeth on the gear collar, which is not fixed to the shaft.

However, you can do the job of the synchronizer on your own by shifting into neutral, engaging the clutch, and then using the throttle to increase the rotational speed of the input shaft, and by extension the free-spinning gears on the output shaft, to match the rotational speed of the collar. If the speeds are exactly the same, the synchronizer does no work.

And, if the speeds are exactly the same, the clutch is not necessary because you have already precisely matched the engine and transmission input and output shaft speeds using the throttle. There is no load on any of the parts (loads that the clutch and synchronizers exist to obscure and tolerate), so there is no damage to the transmission internals.

If you want to go test this in your own car, feel free to try this:
1. Pick a speed and a gear. Lets say 40mph in 4th.
2. Do 40 in 4th, then shift into neutral (use the clutch for this part if you want, but take your foot off the pedal once you're in neutral).
3. Rev the engine to the exact RPM it would be at if you were in 2nd.
4. Lightly tap the shifter into 2nd. If you were at the correct RPM, it will go in.

If you used the clutch to get into neutral, the only thing left to get used to is lightly tapping the stick out of gear when there is neutral load on the driveline. It's arguably requires the most "feel" of any part of this process. But you can get used to it by just driving around normally, then coming off the throttle and then tapping the stick to neutral as you feel the car move through that momentary transition between speeding up and slowing down.

Now go try that with every possible gear and speed that won't lead to you exceeding the rev limiter. In my old 3000GT, for instance, redline was 7000, and 2nd gear ended at 70. If I was doing 60mph in 6th (which was about 2000rpm), it was as simple as flicking the shifter into neutral, raising the engine speed to 6000, and shifting into 2nd.

If you read any article on how a manual transmission works, it should be pretty clear as to how this process works. The reason clutchless shifting (and double-clutching) have such a stigma around them is that people who don't know what they're talking about start throwing around terms like "sweet spot" or say that it damages then transmission when technically it doesn't. As with all other shifting techniques, the driver, not the technique itself, damages the transmission, usually through his own failure and his insistence that there is some sweet spot in the low revs.

 
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That was a very descriptive and useful post, thanks

The Rollagon we drive around at my summer job (Tree Planting) has no synchro (Or maybe it's just not working, I really don't know), so shifting in that is a lot of fun.

 
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I said that to give people a feeling of how it might work and the revolution amount it might occur at. It wasn't a detailed outline on how to do it.
If you press the gas with the clutch engaged, you're going to heat up your clutch plate with friction and create hot spots on the plates. This will give you a rough shift if the spots on the plate are bad enough and eventually lead to replacement.

First you say there's no sweet spot, then you specifically outline the sweet spots. Then you talk about shifting from 6th to 2nd (WTF?). You mention I was wrong for saying you have to lightly tap the shifter and then you say, "...then tapping the stick to neutral..."

Your entire post is conflicting and misinformative.

 
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I wasn't attempting to single you out specifically. I've seen a million threads on a million forums with misinformation about all sorts of things.

We might be using terms differently here, but if we aren't, this is not true. With the clutch engaged (i.e. foot off the pedal), the pressure plate is clamping the disc. At no point during a double-clutch downshift (or a clutchless shift) do you give the car throttle with the clutch pedal pressed.

Are we using the terms differently? In the UK clutch engaged=clutch pedal pressed, but everyone in my area uses clutch engaged to mean clutch pedal not pressed.

Again, I'm not really singling anyone out for the "sweet spot" stuff; I've heard it a million times. But if you want to get really particluar about it, tbohar said that there "is a sweet spot in the RPM range that allows you to put the car in gear with no clutch. The spot is somewhere in the lower rpm ranges." This implies that there is a single "sweet spot" that works for all shifts into and out of all gears, which is not true. Clutchless shifts (and double-clutched shifts) can be made at all engine speeds, from idle to redline. In fact, you can't even stay low in the rev range on most downshifts. If you're doing 4 in 4th (which is a fairly reasonable speed and gear), and you want second, you're going to need at least mid-range rpms. Even the longest 2nd gears aren't geared to be at 2500rpm at 40.

The point is that the correct rpm (or "sweet spot" if you insist) is different but easily calculable for every gear and vehicle speed.

In the example I gave above of downshifting from 6th to 2nd at 60 in a 3000GT, if I was doing 50 and wanted 2nd, I'd rev to 5 grand (which is the engine speed in 2nd at 50). If I was doing 40, I'd rev to 4 grand. If I was doing 33mph, I'd rev to 3300. And so on.

Same thing with all the other gears. 80mph is 5000rpm in 3rd, so it's rev to 5000, tap it in.

As for tapping the shifter, there's a difference between pulling it out of gear while applying throttle and pulling out of gear while having no load on the transmission internals. People should not get in the habit of pulling the stick out of gear when loading the transmission, even though some transmissions are very forgiving and will allow you to disengage the dogs with the internals under load.


Your entire post is conflicting and misinformative.[/QUOTE]

 
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This thread has gone way overboard. All he wanted to know is how to get home if he had no clutch. Therefore I explained it to him in simpleton terms that everyone would understand. The sweet spot is simply the easiest way for someone to understand the message I was trying to relay. Then you came out with this entire detailed hoopla which to many is useful information. On the other hand, to someone with not a lot of mechanical experiance, is just confusing.


You do not need to single ANYONE out as you now have.

Thanks for all the information, it is greatly appreciated.

 
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what a stupid bitch *** garbage topic. the kid who originally asked has probably not even read any of it after the first half of page 1 either.

 
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HAHAHA that made me LOL at work hahaha