Doubleclutching etc.

[Will Owen <nashwill912@domain.elided>]

Gregory Youngblood asked, "Question, if the clutch isn't used to shift, do the synchros
still work to
make the shift smooth?"

Kinda the opposite. Back in the days of Yore (or Yore Granpa, haw haw), before we had all
this synchronizer stuff, all your really slick and with-it drivers would routinely ignore
the clutch whilst on the move, using it only to take off from a stop. Everyone else (your
non-slick, out-of-it drivers, which is to say most of them) would use the clutch and still
make lots of nasty graunching noises. As more and more affluent people began driving their
own cars, the manufacturers adopted various internal speed-matching mechanisms for their
gearboxes, thus delighting the unskilled drivers who could now shift without making all
those scary noises, and annoying hell out of the skilled pros who found that the synchros
stubbornly blocked their attempted "dry" shifts.

The one exception to this is the constant-mesh type of box that comes on motorcycles.
Upshifting sans clutch needs only a momentary lifting of the throttle while catching the
next gear, and (on most bikes of my acquaintance) downshifting is only a little trickier -
mostly just a matter of practice. Only car I can think of with this kind of box is the old
('56 on) Fiat Nuova 500, which had dead-easy clutchless shifting as just one of its
endearing tricks. And Yes, I have dry-shifted a synchro'd car: another Fiat, my old 128,
which would always break its clutch cable at least five miles away from where I could
replace it. NOT fun, nor at all easy...when the Milano blew its clutch pivot, I just stuck
it in 2nd and drove it home that way!

Will Owen
'87 Milano Gold
'72 Berlina Bondo
'71 Citroen DS21
Pasadena, CA
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