My recollection is of the "Unsuitable for caravans" signs being hidden by foliage (we came back later and found them) and my father driving up it in an old and tired Austin 1800, while towing a Sprite Musketeer. We got up it okay, passing a number of stopped and overheated cars on the way.
NY snipped-for-privacy@privacy.net wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@brightview.co.uk:
A fateful story and it would appear that lessons were not learned with near identical crashes 50yrs apart:
Back on topic my Mk 3 Octavia does not cancel CC on gear change which is pretty much how I like it, I might change down to increase acceleration on a resume so don't want it knocked off during that. On slowing down for bends or other obstacles in a 30 I'll usually knock it off for the duration and then resume. I'll also knock it off for potential hazards ahead so that the car will already be decelerating from any throttle lift-off before my foot reaches the brake.
When the car is slowing down due to braking and the engine is on overrun, how does it benefit you to change down unless you need engine braking? All that matters is that you are able to change - maybe directly, 6th to 3rd - to the correct gear for accelerating out of the bend.
The days of changing down sequentially as you approach a hazard are long gone - thankfully. What a palaver that was.
Because a typical gear change leads matey plodding around with no power fumbling for the gear lever and taking probably the best part of a second to get himself organised. He isn't driving the car, the car is driving him.
Use the approach to the corner to select the gear you need to be in after it, just as you should change down before the steep climb.
I was taught not to use it in 1968/9
... which does not require you to go around the bend in the same gear, you can change - maybe directly from 6th to 3rd - when you stop braking just before entry to the bend so you won't need to change gear whilst steering.
Yes, block changing, at the point that the new gear is needed, *does* require a bit more dexterity with the controls to do it quickly.
For the normal test or the IAM advanced test? My instructor told me that sequential changes were what the normal test required. After I'd passed, he said "sequential changes are a load of bollocks - it pains me to have to teach people to do it but it's what the test demands". And then he gave me a lesson on how to drive well rather than to pass the test - and one of the things he mentioned was block changes, though in just one "after passing" lesson he couldn't do much to retrain me. That was left until about 10 years later when I passed the IAM test.
So if you were taught block changes in 1968 for the normal test then it must have allowed it in those days which from what I was told/taught it didn't in 1981.
Normal test.
*shrug*. plenty of idiots on the roads who cant really drive, and the test is merely a bit of paper.In the end you learn to drive after test because you want to be safer and faster or you never learn anything ever again.
This is very weird. I'd always understood that sequential changes were mandatory for the normal test until a couple of decades ago (long after I passed my test), even if Roadcraft and the IAM had been recommending block changes for a long time before that. My instructor had been a Police Class 1 driving instructor before he retired, so he would have taught me block changes if the test had allowed it - that's what he told me once I passed, when he was giving me a "now I'll show you how to drive properly rather than to pass the test" lesson. I wonder if he had misunderstood what the test required and maybe block changes *were* allowed as an alternative to sequential, which would fit in with your experience. One of life's mysteries.
I remember when I was preparing for my advanced test in 1990, it took a bit of un-learning to get out of the habit of sequential changes, and also to learn how to brake progressively - gently at first, gradually increasing, then decreasing again to almost no brake as the car was about to come to rest, which gave smoother braking. Push-pull of the steering wheel came fairly easily, even though I'd got into bad habits before then.
A few years after passing the IAM test, I was part of a group who was learning at night school how to make videos. The story that we devised had a scene which needed some interior driving shots. I offered to be the driver whose hands would be seen. The guy who was in charge said "you drive too much like an expert or a traffic cop, rather than like a normal person" so I had to cross my hands and do the "mechanic's grip" (palm facing me, gripping the steering wheel from the opposite side) in the interests of "art" ;-) I actually found it surprisingly difficult to regress to older ways.
Hopefully my IAM lessons have taught me a little bit of a sixth-sense as to what other drivers might be about to do, and to drive more efficiently, making clutch, brake and tyres last a bit longer. I'm a long way off being perfect, but maybe I'm slightly better than average. Certainly I control my speed with my accelerator rather than my footbrake more than many people - lifting off the power earlier and letting friction, air resistance and gradient slow me down initially, whereas I've ridden with some people who are either on the power or on the footbrake with nothing in between.
The one skill I've never been able to learn (never mind master!) is double-declutching because I've only ever driven cars with working synchromesh so you can never tell whether you are doing it right or wrong because the gear will engage equally easily in either case. But I do try my best to rev-match after I've engaged the new gear and I'm about to bring the clutch up. I had the misfortune to get a lift with someone (my boss, which made things difficult!) who had been taught to come right off the power at each gearchange, let the clutch up on an idling engine (*) and then apply power. When she had apologised for her jerky gearchanges and wondered if she was doing something wrong, I took that as an opportunity to make some very tentative underling-to-boss suggestions about watching the rev counter and increasing or decreasing the engine speed by about 500 rpm when going from one gear to another immediately above or below, which is good as a starting point, even if the "500 rpm" figure varies from one car to another and even between different gears on the same car. *Anything* is better than letting the clutch up on an idling engine, both for the passengers and the clutch plates ;-)
(*) Like trains drivers had to do on early diesel multiple units because a long period of idling was needed to allow all the different gearboxes up and down the train to get into the same gear. I remember the very jerky acceleration of trains on the Aylesbury-Marylebone line as they set off from each station, because of this limitation.
The rationale in those days that because disc brakes at leats in the front were the norm, engine braking placed unnecessary wear on the engine which was expensive compared to the brakes which were cheap to replace. My instructor taught both styles, but he said that in normal driving a
4th to 2nd transition *before* the corner was smooth and safer. He absolutely did not like changing gear in the corner or after the corner.I never took the IAM test, but I read up on it and thought that by and large it was pretty good common sanse and mostly how I driove anyway, so adopted pertty much all of it.
Oh you can. The key is the engine revs don't change when you let the clutch out.
Also heel and toeing is a pretty vital skill if you want to go fast - that allows you to change gear as you brake into a corner....
I once had a lift in a Cortina Estate, in which the driver used a consistent method of dropping the clutch after each gear change, with the engine at idle. It was horrible and I was surprised his girlfriend appeared to accept it without comment. Clutch life must have been measured in moths rather than years.
An interesting unit, the Moth.
I have never ever replaced a clutch on any car I ever drove.
Except after a total engine out/rebore/regrind/ lighten/balance/hot camshaft swap, and that wasn't because it was gone, but because it was cheap and easy to do.
People who slip the clutch rather than changing down make my hackles rise.
There is no need. Apart from starting from rest.
If tou cant do clutch control properly buy an automatic.
I'll trade my moth for your tou.
Ditto on the clutch replacement, only done when the engine or gearbox was out, and it made sense to do it at the time. I had a slave cylinder failure once, but that was not the clutch disk itself.
On double-declutching, I knew when I was learning to drive that I would be owning and driving 'older' vehicles, so my Dad taught me that skill from the start. He had learned it in the Army during WWII, on lorries, and was one of those who never had to pass a civilian driving test. I got so used to doing it, that even now I find it difficult to not do it when driving any manual. Who needs synchromesh?
I once (1972) worked for a summer at a major soft-drink distributor, and did various random jobs in the Transport office. One of them was to list the service invoices for the company's service vans. Automatic transmission was getting more common, and there was a big spike for manual gearbox vans at about 30,000 miles, due to clutch replacements, that just was not there with the automatics.
My boss, who was a family friend, came over to me one day and told me to come with him, we were going for a test drive. We took the brand new Morris Marina out, and we ended up at a lonely empty roundabout, going round faster and faster. Eventually, the rear axle complained, and started a massive tramping. My boss said: "It's terrible. We'll take 30 of them". He didn't have to drive them, but the poor salesmen did.
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