ClubCJ - The CJ Lancer Club

Now im not a a big guy, 6ft and size 11 shoe, but does anyone else have trouble doing heel-toe in the lancer.... feels like the accelerator is slightly recessed further than the brake pedal.... or is it my imagination and i just cant do it lol

Yeah same here

I'm finding it hard, yet possible. You really do have to get your seating position right in order to do it.

Yup I've notice this aswell kinda annoying In my opinion

yeah i can do it in the lancer but not everytime i do it, and not smooth as i could in other cars yeah sometimes the seats can be uncomfortable i might have to move the steering wheel up a bit

I can do it without fail in 99% of the vehicles I drive/have driven. It's all in the technique. The correct shoes help a lot too.

I have never even bothered to learn :S

If you buy a set of racing pedals that are a bit bigger than the stock pedals it makes it quite easy to do. I don't really heel-toe intentionally but sometimes if I am changing gears quickly I can do it.

SIR-VRX wrote:I can do it without fail in 99% of the vehicles I drive/have driven. It's all in the technique. The correct shoes help a lot too.

+1 !!! I agree totally....

Not had many issues in my VR getting the heel across... I will note that I've missed the rev matching a few times though....

I actually prefer driving without heel-toe anyway. I know it aint faster for people who can heel-toe properly but thats just it - I cant actually do it PROPERLY, so normal changing is faster for me. I end up wasting less than half a second doing the normal change. In saying that I'll probably need to replace my gearstick at some point lol

Excuse me being stupid, but what is 'heel-toe'?

What are you doing? Something to do with accelerator and brake?

Bandit...
Yep manual driving the "heel toe" was used in the old non synchro manual gearboxes when down shifting to allow you to brake and rev the engine (usually accompanied by a "double clutch" ie pop the clutch mid shift/through neutral) to allow both a smooth rev and gear matching to avoid "crunching" the gears.

Older buggers like myself got used to it, trying to find first gear mid hill on old holdens and fords.

Now the technique is:
- toe of shoe or ball of foot on brake pedal, and heel or side of foot on the accelerator to allow control/modulation of both simultaneously.

PS Also great for hill starts when the handbrake does not work. Gotta love the old cars.... boy I had some bombs during Uni days. I thought a good car was one which started!

Roger, I am with you now - about matching road speed to engine speed. I have driven many non-synchro trucks/coaches but hadn't ever heard double clutching being called that 'heel-toe'. In fact with most (esp older) non-synchro diesels, you can change gears quite smoothly up and down without the clutch.

Why would you want to do this in a synchro car beats me though - each to their own.....

Yeah its also a method of keeping speed up on EXIT of corners

I.e. keeping the engine revving throughout the braking period and apex allows the engine to still be in condition to just 'accept' the gear change and jump out of the corner, whereas sometimes if you have the wrong gear or the engine isnt revved high enough the car sort of 'grips the clutch' (dunno how to word it) and slows down briefly as you release the clutch up past the biting point. Feels like the cars trying to leap backwards on ya.

hmm ok - never felt that in a car. Maybe I don't go fast enough....

Clarification of terms:
- heel-toe is what you do with your right foot
- double (de-?)clutch is what you do with your left foot.

In modern cars with full synchromesh, can be totally independent or done together, or not done at all.

It is all about being smooth (old and new cars) & mechanically sympathetic (in particular with the older cars). So for modern cars, a heel-toe can give baby bum smooth down changes (not neck snapping clutch popping). Gettting it right is a magic/beautiful thing, getting it wrong is ugly abuse!

On the track, at the limit, that smoothness pays off!
You need to know how to do both to get the most out of a Formula Ford.