Smoother shifts while redlining?
 

I bang through the gears frequently, and power shift when I race, and get the typical jolt through each gear. I heard that there is a way to smoothly go through each gear even at redline. Is this actually possible?

Also, does anyone else feel like the stock clutch kind of engages a little slow, particularly while cruising around?

yes, it's about timing.

I find if I'm shifting really fast with SRM off it's smooth as butter at or near redline... But with SRM it jolts. Just my experience, not sure if it's the same for anyone else.

You have to slow down your shifts, just like how you would drive smoothly during normal driving.

i'm naturally trying to shift through each gear as quickly as possible under WOT. So you're saying to simply row through the gears slower? Won't I lose time doing that?

let me try that today :D

wdkwang there you go again blaming equipment vs technique. :icon17: ;)

Well, yeah lol. You asked for smooth shifts which requires slowing them down. If you just bang through the gears, there is nothing you can really do to smooth it out completely.

icic. i was just watching some pro track videos. these guys are straight up racing but the jolt doesn't seem very apparent with the in-car cameras.

@kenchan u know what i mean lawl. i know my technique isn't perfect but everyone notices how first gear engages a bit slow compared to other cars. i don't even understand why

shifting at redline is inherently jolty. Think about it... you're going from putting down like 280whp, to 0whp during the shift back to 270whp when you shift at high rpms.

yes but apparently it can be done

A lot of track/drag racers will burn their clutches though to save time. Especially at the drag strip, drivers looking for the fastest time ride the clutch pretty hard because they never let go of gas fully.

Basically when they need to shift they will drop from 100% engagement of gas pedal to about 50-60%( instead of fullly disengaging the gas to 0%) before hitting the clutch pedal.

This will allow for smoother and quicker shifts with less footwork involved. However, don't expect your clutch to hold up.

thank you

Theres a difference between jolty because of crappy shifting and jolty because of a ton of power all of a sudden being sent to the wheels.

In a GTR in R mode the shifts are are as hard as they will ever get in the car, however they are still smoother than a human can do in an MT, but you definitely can feel them despite being a DCT (Which is smoother than any human could possibly shift)

if you want to be able to shift faster then you need the revs to drop faster ( ie lightweight flywheel). one of the things i noticed in the 370z is how long the revs take to drop between shifts. from first to 2nd or 2nd to 3rd if you hit like 7k rpm and go to shift, in my head the jeopardy song comes on while i would wait for the revs to drop

Do you mean a jolt forward when you re-engage the clutch, because the revs haven't had time to come down? If you want to get rid of that, get a lighter flywheel.

Or do you mean jolt in the shifter because your synchros are crying.

guess next mod will be jwt's lightweight flywheel or perhaps nst pulley kit

the jolt-less wot will net you slower acceleration time vs power shifting because you have to wait for the fly wheel to spin down for the next gear.

if you're drag racing you'll want minimum shift time so in this case you will get a jolt (and some nice tire chirp).

lighter flywheel is a great mod for an NA car your time between shifts will be greatly decreased

exactly. if you want to shift as smooth as possible (although still not that smooth) you have to wait for the revs to fall to the right spot for the next gear. the faster they fall, the sooner you can engage the next gear.... ie lightended flywheel.

:iagree: but wd will have an even harder time not stalling the car... :icon17:

flywheel is on the shadoquad long term wish list for this car. :icon17:

A fellow Z owner at last year's Zdayz told me that it was by far his favorite mod in the car.

:ugh2:

just teasing. :tup:

:p

Powershifting prevents the flywheel from slowing down, you're keeping revs at redline while clutching and then the flywheel is suddenly taxed with having to immediately slow down to match the speed of the transmission due to the next gear being larger. Thus why your shifts are so rough - lift off the throttle when you're clutching.

When you redline, you have to shift fast enough to prevent your RPMs from falling too far down but not so fast that they haven't had enough time to slow down. With a close-ratio gearbox like ours, you'd have to be an extremely slow shifter to let the revs drop too far down. So just try working on lifting off the throttle during the clutching, and turning off SRM does help like Nick said - because the natural tendency of the SRM is to hang the flywheel/revs for a tiny bit, before slowing down and matching the RPM of the next gear. Remember, the SRM actually rev-matches on both the up and downshift.