Ready for Heel Toe Action
 

So the BRZ is my first manual car, but I was not a newb with manuals. I feel I am ready to really start improving on my manual skills. Is it possible to heel toe with our peddles or what?

Yes.

I find it easier to use the side of my foot to blip with the stock pedals rather than normal heal-toe. Though, both work fairly well.

Yes, it's possible to heel and toe with our pedals. I do it while at the track and sometimes even on the street to put less stress on the clutch.

Yep. Although more of a 'toe-side' with the pedal setup in the FRS.

This. Makes it irritating to try barefoot~

I heel toe all around town, it's just habit and muscle memory now. You do not need special pedals or anything goofy, just practice, practice, practice. The harder you apply the brakes, the easier it is because you have a firmer pedal to work with. Practicing under lighter braking loads helps improve muscle memory and sensitivity.

Personally, I prefer the inner ball and big toe to remain on the brake pedal, and the outer edge of my heel to catch the gas pedal.

Edit- good thin-sole driving shoes help.

Your best bet is to ask someone who's very proficient @ it & have them break it all down for you when you booth have an hour or 2 to spare. As stated, it's going to take A LOT of practice to become second nature.

You'll eventually br able to do it in any car (except maybe a 1st Gen Viper lol) w/o thinking twice...

Driving school. Fun and beneficial!

If you haven't yet, try rev match downshifting a few times too. Doing it gets you used to blipping the accelerator when downshifting. After that, all you're doing is adding brake input

I started doing that. I have a CBR600rr and the concept makes sense. Especially downshifting around a corner... do that wrong and you lock up the rear wheel and that's never good. Haha.

None of my friends I know are great drivers. So Ill watch some youtube videos and practice and practice.

If you shift in a corner (when you're at or near the limit) you're doing it very wrong. Only a maintenance throttle, some trail-braking and exit acceleration should be done there, you need to be in the right gear before turn-in.

This. Downshifting at the limit is a nice way to spin into the wall.

well im not talking about pushing the limit and down braking. Sometimes you have to slow down going around a corner. I have 33k miles of ride time and it happens. I am not your summer joy rider and put 500 miles a summer.

For me when i wanted to learn how to heel and toe i just did it in my drive way. Pull the e-brake, turn on car and practice the motion. Once you got that down, practice on a semi deserted road so you dont brake check someone hard. I dont usually heel and toe on the road but rev matching is second nature to me. Some people do it with the side of their foot, but i do the full motion just because it's more comfortable for me.

I wouldn't go that far. It's mostly the same motion (though differences in pedal spacing can change things - on my outback and the BRZ/FRSs that I test drove, the pedals are really close together, so I end up doing a sort of thing with the left side of my foot on the brake and the right side on the gas, while in my Cayman, they're farther apart and better placed for a true heel on gas, toe on brake motion), but it still takes some practice to do it right in each new car. Differences in throttle response, gear ratios, and how quickly the engine revs with no load make it difficult to smoothly downshift until you get used to each different car.

For an extreme example, I got a chance to drive a Ferrari 360 recently (what a glorious car...) - its engine revved so quickly and freely that it was very difficult to downshift smoothly, and the clutch pedal had a pretty short (and stiff) throw that didn't help matters. My Outback on the other hand revs pretty slowly, but it has a different problem: I'm so used to the noise made by my Cayman, that I have to pay attention to hear the (much quieter) engine sound on the Outback to properly rev match the downshifts.

It's definitely a lot easier to adapt than it is to learn the first time, but there's still a significant amount of adjustment you have to make for each car to get it just right.

add gen 2 to that list lol.

Nah... Infinitely better than Gen 1.

When I drove one for the 1st time (it was a Skip Barber car my buddy who worked for them, let me take a spin), I immediately was a able to blip down @ the first corner. My buddy was riding shotgun & remember him giving me props, since it was the first time I'd even hit the brake. They're actually very similar to a C5/C5 pedal setup (which I've had abt 10 of those cars lol).

I guess I have seat time in so many cars, it's easy for me to immediately adapt. This is especially true when I drive all these wacky cars @ the Grassroots $20xx Challenges... lol

Adding another foot-contortion car: F-bodies lol

Take it from a former MSF instructor, that should be avoided. You should be set up and in the proper gear before you enter the corner so you can gradually accelerate out of it. You want to do as little as possible to upset the balance while you're in the corner. Not that special circumstances won't require it on unexpected occasions but you should be aware of that and avoid doing that when ever possible.

Yep, no shame in standing her up going off the track.

Unless your "track" happens to be a street, and going off of it puts you right into a solid object. In which case, choose your own adventure. I like my odds a lot better on the track though.

I never could get my heel / toe technique up to a usable point on the street. So I gave up.

The only places I find it would be useful is going downhill with an upcoming corner.

This is my first manual car as well. After getting comfortable with regular shifting, downshifting and rev-matching, I tried the heel & toe. It didn't work out good at first. Some people say you can do it, but I couldn't reach the gas pedal unless I was braking really hard. That, you can do on track, not much on street. So I just bought the cusco gas pedal and it is a lot closer to brake pedal's level. You can easily feel the gas pedal under regular braking.

LOL…

I learned to heel/toe & rev match on the downshifts back in the mid-80's…

I was fresh out of high school, and the car was my roommates…

She had one stipulation when I first started driving it…

"If you stall it, you will never drive it again…"

I started out in 2nd gear the first time in it, just to be sure to not stall out…!

The car…? A wicked 4 banger/4 speed Rallye Edition Ford PINTO…!!!

(It said RALLYE across the sides, had a blacked out grill & rear deck spoiler…)

ME & my friends dogged the SHITTE out of that car in the summer of 1984, had our own little 'road course' thru the streets of a quiet subdivision…!

I also learned the art of moving forward from a dead stop in traffic while going uphill, the quick way; it was bumper to bumper with a Mercedes RIGHT on my arse…! SO afraid I was gonna roll back into it…!

Good times, good times…

If you would like to try something that will make things even smoother; instead of blipping the throttle when you down shift, work on coordinating your left and right foot so that just as your clutch is engaging the new lower gear, you right foot has brought up the rpm's to where they will be in the new gear you've selected. Instead of blipping through a range of rpm's, with practice you are truly rev matching and not just throwing a blip at it.

I would say this is awesome advice. I have been driving stick for about 6 years now and in the past couple years I've been practicing rev matching and now do it all the time, however I have not had the chance to do a whole lot of heel-toe mainly cause I haven't hit the track, but that's my next step.

I can already notice that being really comfortable with rev-matching will be extremely helpful with heel-toe.

Double thumbs up for this advice lol.

I sort of lost you man... Can you explain this differently?

I'm not sure I can but I'll try. If you're in any gear and want to down shift, go ahead and push the clutch in and with your right hand shift down a gear. Now at the same time you start to release the clutch use your right foot to bring the rpm's up to where they will want to be when the transmission engages in the new gear. If you didn't use the throttle and just released the clutch your car would lurch and let's say the rpm's would jump up from 2000 rpms to 3500 rpms. If you had the tach reading 3500 rpms the split second your clutch engaged it would not cause any unnecessary wear on your clutch, there would be no lurching and the down shift would be as smooth as silk.

I think that's the best I can break it down for you.

That's what you do when you blip the throttle though. I don't see how anything you said is any different from the normal technique (though you probably want to hit the gas earlier than when you start to release the clutch unless you shift really slowly).

A "blip" implies that there is very little control, that you're just stabbing at the throttle hoping that the revs land where you want when you engage the clutch.

It's just a different way of thinking about the operation you're performing, speed isn't the goal, accuracy is.

yea i think he just confused the word blip.

I practice heel-toe everyday on my commute. Not hitting the track isn't an excuse; there's bound to be situations in real life where it pays to know this technique.

not really. Rev matching is more than enough for every day driving. Hell even through mountain roads i barely heel and toed just because i would brake+rev match quick enough and smooth enough that most of the time i wouldn't need to heel and toe.

I get it now. Well im still learning to "rev match" but I do want to improve my driving skills. You never know when you have to race away from Chuck Norris or something.

No it's not. Post #30 does a good job of explaining the difference.

this makes no sense... like.. at all.

Heel/toe technique was developed to save time. On the track, the car needs to be accelerating or decelerating and nothing inbetween. When you don't heel/toe, you spend the time you would have saved in a neutral state (neither accelerating nor braking). Heel/toe is done anytime you need to brake for a turn and need to be in a different gear. Its used every day, all over the street. I dont understand what you mean by brake and rev match quick enough, its impossible to move your right foot from the brake, to the gas pedal faster than a heel/toe. if it was, thered be no reason to learn heel/toe.

The left foot brake technique was also developed to save time, instead of having to move your right foot over, you keep it on the gas and use left foot to modulate the brake. It enables more precise control and faster transition from braking to accelerating. Used mostly in rally and rally-x.

I think you mistook my wording. For every day driving ie commuting heel and toe is not needed. You can if you want, but imo there's no point. When i mean i can brake+rev match quick enough ill give an example. Lets say you're approaching a corner in 3rd gear and need to downshift to 2nd for a hairpin. For the heel and toe technique, you approach, brake, clutch downshift+blip and be done all within a second or less. When im talking about just braking and rev matching i would approach the corner the same, brake a bit harder, let off the brake, rev match within a second or less and be set for the corner. You only lose maybe a half second if that. Now for the track, or autox if the course is large enough yea i would heel and toe just because that's a timed event, but for mountain roads i generally do what i feel like. Some times i would heel and toe and others i would just rev match.

This is the way I do it too, for the most part.

Well thats the difference in dedication then. I practiced every single time i was behind the wheel, still do, though my racing career is pretty much over for now. Practice every single time, the times you arent using proper technique is just a chance youve deprived yourself to improve.

Today while making a right turn exit, I had a big ass truck in my ass, so I had to heel-toe rev match in case that fu*ker comes close to rear ending me so I have immediate power to get away. Sometimes, you just have to do it and it's good to know how to do it in case something happens so you wont be in neutral or in a low rpm gear when it happens..