Why shift into 3rd when you’re at the top of second gear with I intention to accelerate any further? I very frequently blast through 1st and 2nd only to slot it into 5th to cruise around 55mph.

Unless you pause for a long time in neutral, you're wearing the piss out of that fifth gear balk ring. Even if you don't engage the clutch, row through the gears.

I once believed that gears never got oil unless they were being used.

So it was important to use every gear to keep them lubricated properly

Launch control and flat foot shifting:barf:. Two of the worse "features" ever conceived.

This went places I had not expected. My shifting days are nearly over, as I am trading the BRZ, mint and 14,500 km on the cutie, for a Solterra in the next little while.



My fuel bill will go from $160 a month to about $20 a month and at this stage in my life an SUV is more useful. As well I will sell my Suzuki Samurai as the Solterra will be just fine for 90% of my logging road wandering.

Don’t think there is any real mechanical reason to use them all but in my case is more just habit. Most of my old cars (50s and early 60s) that I drove as DDs right into the 90s were all 3 speeds. Of course when you only have 3 gears you use them all all the time. Some of the military stuff I drove for years didn’t even have synchros so again you used every gear no matter what. Once I got cars with 4, 5 and 6 gears my old habits just remained. As Ultra said earlier I may not actually stay in each gear but at least row trough them all every single time. Don’t think I have ever intentionally skipped a gear no matter how many they have.

Yeah, no sychros on a truck either. My first truck was a Ford with a 5 and 4 transmission set up. Now after finally getting it under control, you learned a clutch was not something you actually needed a lot of the time. For shifting down it was a good idea but the rest were mostly un-clutched. As we have square cut gears if you get it wrong its a struggle. Get it right they just drop in.


Now skip shifting that setup was a thing I did a lot, once I could hit the gears consistently.

I let the rpms drop to match and slot the lever in with minimal pressure, when it wants to, not when I tell it to. Never had a problem and I've had 3 Manual BMWs I've put over 100k on each without ever touching the transmission or clutch, I sold my E46 with 196k on the original clutch and that clutch is still going at 250k as of 6 months ago. Mechanical sympathy goes a long way even when you do tend to drive the crap out of a motor/gearbox. My foot doesn't go hard down until the gears are properly meshed and the engine is out of lugging territory.

I've always referred to those baulk rings as synchro rings, thanks for showing me the correct term!

Just have a spare trans on hand and hammer away.

Yeah! Baulk -5 spelling to me haha...
Mechanical sympathy FTW. I get exactly what you describe. Motor on, my dude!

They're so hard to swap, tho.

https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...473025e1b1.gif

lol :clap:

Same as tachometer, at least I use 7k of them