Friday, February 16, 2007
Got a Miata
I picked up a '96 Miata yesterday. It only had 36K on it and I had a mechanic to a quick check on it. I think I over paid a bit for it, but at this price range, that's not a big deal.
I haven't never own a manual transmission car before, so my experience is quite limited. I just realized today that I been skipping 3rd and 4th gear and going to 5th quite often. This causes a great bit grinding noise as the dog teeth try to engage. This is partly due to me driving at night and not realizing the damn car was a 5 speed instead of 4. I took a closer look at the stick this morning and realize my mistake.
Down shifting is still a pain, and I lock up the wheels quite often. I'm breaking the down shift into multiple steps for now. First, I step on the clutch and shift into neutral. Then I rev up about 2K RPM and down shift. However I only press the clutch once instead of twice. I need to find out if that causes any problems or not.
Here's some good information for heel-toe shifting:
http://www.edmunds.com/ownership/howto/articles/45792/article.html.
I haven't never own a manual transmission car before, so my experience is quite limited. I just realized today that I been skipping 3rd and 4th gear and going to 5th quite often. This causes a great bit grinding noise as the dog teeth try to engage. This is partly due to me driving at night and not realizing the damn car was a 5 speed instead of 4. I took a closer look at the stick this morning and realize my mistake.
Down shifting is still a pain, and I lock up the wheels quite often. I'm breaking the down shift into multiple steps for now. First, I step on the clutch and shift into neutral. Then I rev up about 2K RPM and down shift. However I only press the clutch once instead of twice. I need to find out if that causes any problems or not.
Here's some good information for heel-toe shifting:
http://www.edmunds.com/ownership/howto/articles/45792/article.html.
# posted by Mack @ 2:41 PM 
