Team-BHP - Upshifting from 3rd to 5th

A very interesting style of driving which I happened to notice prompted me to bring this topic up to get views from our learned community.

My work place is around 20km from home. The route I take is through the Bandra-Worli sealink. My colleague and I alternatively take turns driving every week. As user of this link would know coming from the south end going north, there are a couple of sharp turns especially the one which leads you to the 4-laned main deck. Many a times due to evening traffic the two laned entry from south end is slow progress in 3rd or 4th gear.

What I have observed is that my colleague more often than not would stay on 3rd (not revving high mind you) and soon after hitting the main deck would revv the car the swiftly jump to the 5th bypassing the 4th gear altogether. His logic is, "the lesser you supress the clutch better will be the life. and since you know you are going to shift to 5th quickly why bother to go to 4th". He does the same while downshifting as well. He drives a Polo & Altis (both petrol).

Can learned members enlighten me if this is a correct / good approach and the logic behind the same.

Mods - Couldn't find a similar thread elsewhere hence posting a new topic. Please merge if duplicate detected. Thanks.

It does not harm if you upshift from 3rd to 5th, skipping the 4th, under "right conditions" (you don't lug the engine or put stress on the transmission). Infact, automatic transmissions like the Volvo I-Shift precisely does this by monitoring the vehicle load, speed etc among other vehicle parameters.

Quote:

Originally Posted by arup.misra (Post 2674982)

A very interesting style of driving which I happened to notice prompted me to bring this topic up to get views from our learned community.

Can learned members enlighten me if this is a correct / good approach and the logic behind the same.

Mods - Couldn't find a similar thread elsewhere hence posting a new topic. Please merge if duplicate detected. Thanks.

While I am not a learned member :), I dont think there is anything wrong in the approach which you have described. I have seldom done direct shifting from 3 to 5 but a lot of times have shifted from higher to lower gears skipping the between gears for example from 4 to 2 etc.

Lets wait for other members to chip in, though

Hey arup just the topic I was keen on posting soon. Really appreciate you bringing it up. :)

To be honest, I follow the same method while cruising on the Highways. Usually, I upshift to 5 from 3 and Downshift Viceversa if I have not lost too much speed in between. Experts please confirm that this is not going to harm the engine on a longer run.

I do shift a lot of times from 3rd to 5th on all my MT vehicles, but after giving it a bit of a rev in 3rd before shifting.

Why do it- Plain lazyness. I don't believe there are proven benifits or otherwise to the life of the cluth eitherways. But having to press the clutch less may enhance the life of my left knee pad for sure. :)

While shifting down going from 5th to 3rd is quite frequent or at times even 2nd on rare occations (when braking for a speed bump).

Bottomline wish my Aria had a DSG 6 speed AT to do away with the 5 speed manual. Lesser the shifts the less we tired we get.

Due to the same bit of lazyness I also tend to at times drive at speeds of 100+ in 3rd gear when the shift up followed by going back down is going to be for a shot period of say 5-7 secs. Similarly at times drive at 100-120 in 4th and don't shift up to 5th. Have driven this way even with my earlier TCIC Safari and the clutch did last till about 60K kms each time. So don't see a major impact either way.

IMO shifting from 3rd to fifth is not a bad idea at all , but the only catch is that the revs in the 3rd gear should be sufficiently high when you make the shift , if they are two low , it might put extra load on the transmission.

Basically the whole idea is to do effective rev matching , if you don't feel the engine strained , it should be fine !

This is common for many people I know too. I usually end up doing this when on the highway and not in a hurry!
Basically when you upshift from 3 to 5, you miss out a bit on the acceleration. This is fine for relaxed cruising.
Mild deceleration on the other hand on highways is best served by a 5 to 3 shift for a quick recovery to cruising speed.

A lot depends on the kind of car and whether its a petrol or diesel too (where you get max torque)
When using my fiesta 1.6 very often a 5 to 4 shift works because the torque comes in at lower RPM versus when I am driving the Palio 1.6 which needs a 5 to 3 shift as peak torque is made higher in the rev range.

To answer your question, I have been doing this for years and have known others who do this too and no harm done yet!

Shifting should ideally be sequential with no missed gears. However, third to fifth is a common practice. About 30 years ago (when most boxes were 4-speed), it was common practice (esp. in European cars) to have a large gap between 2 & 3 with 3 & 4 close together. So we all used to often skip the third. With five speed boxes 3 and 4 are still close together, so 3 > 5 is just a reflection of this old practice.

Good topic . I too had been wanting to bring this up for discussion.

From around 1999 when we had a Zen my style of driving is that I do not use the 4 th gear ever.

I drive very sedately and do no accelerate very hard. Around 45kmph I shift from 3rd directly to 5th and do not accelerate but keep cruising. My general top speed while driving is 55kmph.

Also when down shifting I go from 5th to 3rd.

I drive a end 2009 Fiesta Zxi Petrol.

I never tried this in my 800.

But after upgrading to Figo i am skipping 4th gear at times because @ 45-50 kmph there is enough torque in the engine to accelerate without lugging. Only on flat roads & sloping down roads.

Classic situation is while overtaking a slow moving truck in 3rd gear i reach 50-55 kmph then shift to 5th & coast till the next truck - downshift to 3rd & so on (People who drove in single lane Kerala roads will know what i am talking about)

I have done this in my Swift (which has a third gear almost like an AT!) but that was only because I would be cruising in what I thought was fifth and suddenly realise that I'm in 3rd, so quickly (and a little sheepishly) slot into 5th and cruise some more.

Why anyone would want to this as a habit I have no idea, unless it's what sgiitk is talking about.

By the way that explanation given by your friend of saving clutch wear is a little specious, I think. He is probably just lazy (as ACM mentioned!)

I do jump 4th gear when I am on good speed at 3rd gear and clear traffic at front. I donot think this will enhance the life of clucth. Also, when I have to negotiate with spead brakers, always I downshift from 5 to 3 or even 2. My brother says, this downshifting for engine braking will result in less FE. Is this true?

Going from 3rd to 5th under right conditions should not cause any damage. In all my two decades of driving, I have never faced any issues by such acts.

Posting a link from the exemplary site "howstuffworks" which has a terrific graphic showing how a typical manual transmission works. Just focus on the collar movement to see how different gears are engaged. This should provide a clue about how the drive shaft is hooked to the gear system in 3rd and overdrive.

HowStuffWorks "A Real Transmission"

I would never want to skip through gears!

But then, I have seen FE conscious taxi drivers do this way too often. In the Omni, it was 2 to 4 and in new gen cars its 3-5.

A typical situation where they would do this is on slight inclines, and immediate downward slope. They go up in 3rd and come down in 5th. Another situation where I have seen them doing it is while overtaking. They revv up, build momentum, overtake a vehicle, and immediatly shift to 5th and cruise.

This practice in the above mentioned situation seem to save fuel. Its like they are so eager to get back to that efficient rpm.