Yes, I am new to standard trannies. (I did live in San Francisco for a year, but that is another story.)
Anyway, I am pretty good at getting the car moving now if I do say so myself. Typically what I do is to give it a little gas (something like low 1000s RPM), then ease the clutch pedal up as I get on the throttle. Well, after doing this for a while I actually tend to lift my left foot up fairly quickly to the funny zone, and _then_ ease it up, so as not to stall.
So I feel ready for the next level now. As in, how to take off with some haste. Now of course, some trial and error on my part is planned. But I would appreciate some pointers as to what is good to do (and not to do). TIA & ZZ
So up with the left foot and down with the right, eh? That does sounds like fun. I googled "Shinsen differential" and it looks like the car has a Tochigi-Fuji LSD. Hopefully that'll do.
Are my car parts gonna break if I end up doing this a lot?
........ are parts going to break if I do this ? "Does a bear shit in the woods ?? " Sure parts are going to break !!! The car was designed very well, but that is not how it was designed to be used. It will take it for a while, but some day it will break. (you can bet on it! )
Bruce, I have never seen a bear take a shit firsthand, but I think I understand what you are saying.
But now I'm wondering, so when BMW or C&D test cars and give their official 0-60 specs, they're dumping the clutch at 6000rpm or wherever same as you & me, right? Not to mention auto-crossers.
So I guess we live with the fact that a good launch = car abuse basically.
Hmm, what about automatics, or better yet SMTs and the Audi/VW dual- clutch jobs, if anyone knows - are some of these transmissions inherently less damaging to launch? Not that I'm switching anytime soon, just curious.
Well you can look at it this way. If you run the RPM's up to 4, 5, or
6,000, and drop the clutch, something needs to take all that power. First, the tires may just giveup and spin. Thats a good thing for the drive shaft and ring and pinion gear, but you don't any place. Next you buy good "stickey / gooie tires" that will not break loose for anything. Now you have put all that stress back on the drive shaft, the pinion gear, the pinion bearings, the ring gear and the half shafts. Of all of those, the ring and pinion is the weak point. Then the pinion bearings. If the rinf and pinion hold up long enough, the pinion bearings will go next because of the load trying to walk the pinion down the ring gear. The pinion gear will fail ! SO, now eather you build a rear end so strong that it will take that and add weight to the car, or you just let it go and hope some "jackass" does not do it too many times and blow it up. I think you will find that the "Monster Miatas" went to a "T Bird" rear end so they would not blow the rear end and make the tires pay the price of power. My '91 (unsupercharged) Miata would make the tires (Yokomama 007RS) give up at
5,000 and up in an autocross start, but sooner or later tha rear end WILL go doing that. It's up to you. :-)
I assume you meant "you don't GO anyplace." Getting the best launch takes practice and experimentation. The object is to get the tires spinning just enough to keep the rpm in the powerband, but not so much it's just a useless, go-nowhere burnout. Every situation will have a different optimal launch rpm, according to the tires' grip and the type of pavement.
Most car magazines try various techniques and publish results from the one that worked best. Sometimes the car breaks in the process.
Going fast cost money, unless you are using somebody else's car. C&D does not own the car and they do break them every once in a while. They also quote a rolling start number for the acceleration.
The C&D test procedure is to dump the clutch 1000, 2000, 3000 until they get their best time, tires go up in smoke, axle hops sets in, or bits fall of the car. They quote the best time adjusted for weather conditions (a car will go faster at 75 F that 105 on a sunny Las Vegas day.)
The engine and drive train of an NHRA competitor has to last for 1/4 of a mile. The guy willing to stress his car to that level will win the race. If you want to baby your hotrod so it will go 100 k mikes, you will loose to him.
Best launch on an automatic is done by holding the car with the brakes as you increase rpm. Release the brake suddenly and the car will launch. This causes high temperatures in the torque converter and, yes, it will shorten the life of the transmission.
By SMT you mean f-1 paddle no-clutch pedal manuals?
Those have electronic throttles that match rpm's. They will launch at a pre-set rpm selected by the computer. Some cars have a launch control mode that will dump the clutch at high rpm's (such systems are not available in the US because there are too many lawyers - remember the demonically possesed Audis?)
Dual Clutch transmission use multi plate wet clutches. They act like a torque convert on shifts.
Man, if I ever need advice on how to break my valuable car, this here newsgroup's the place to find it. Keep in mind that car magazines performance test _other people's_ cars. If somebody is supplying you with a car for free, or if you're actually Paris Hilton posting under a pseudonym, then Hell yeah, money's no object, jam the pedal to the metal.
You've already got past the big hump in the stick-shift learning curve, which is coming off the line without jerking and stalling. If you're using a manual for the first time in your driving career, your best bet is to keep doing what you're already doing but gradually a bit faster and faster- a bit heavier on the gas pedal, a little quicker pulling up on the clutch.
As you practice more and more at gradually higher performance levels, you'll acquire a reflexive feel for the gas/clutch/shifter combination, and in no more than a few months tops you'll be zipping away from traffic lights with the best of us. You'll be there when you catch yourself having shifted by feel in traffic for long periods without having consciously thought about shifting at all. Then, with your well-trained shifting reflexes, you can start working on how to drive high-performance style like an autocrosser.
Plus, unlike what will happen if you start popping the clutch at 6000 RPM a lot, at that point you will neither have a pile of receipts for expensive drivetrain repairs nor a car with smashed-up bodywork from where you took off sideways at tire-smoking take-off.
You are "correct again" Lanny. Every day, every track and track temp. will have a big change on how you do it. You just need to learn to "feel it". :-)
Hey, I wasn't seriously recommending 6k launches, though autocrossers use them routinely. But the previous poster advised dumping the clutch at 3k, which will only bog the engine of a Miata with decent tires.
in the 10 years I've owned my Miata, I have never done more than chirp the tires a bit, and that only a couple of times. The Miata isn't about getting up to speed quickly--it's about not having to slow down once you're there.
To the OP: you're on the right track. Practice and learn, you'll do fine.
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