[A4] A4 clutchless shifting

[Peter Kirby]

I had to do this with an old Volvo of mine:  the clutch cable broke in
downtown Montreal and I was a poor student with no money to pay for
towing (and I wanted the challenge of driving it across town with no
clutch).  You just have to be good at matching the RPM of the engine
with the RPM of the transmission.  If you are not right on, the
syncros have to do more work.  If you are not good at it, you can go
through a set of syncros pretty fast.

BTW, "speed shifting" is when you do not let off on the gas before you
shift gears.  It can be done with or without use of the clutch,
depending on the transmission.  Without a rev limiter this can be
hazardous to the engine if you can't get it into the next gear
quickly.  It is very tough on the transmission.  Not recommended
unless you have very deep pockets.

A friend with a Subaru Legacy GT only uses his clutch to get going.
The rest of the time he just matches the revs.  This is the way he has
driven each of his last several cars....and they all live to a good
age.  My old Audi 90's (10V and 20V)  would shift very easily without
the clutch.

Peter

On 4/19/07, Sean Reifschneider <jafo-audifans at tummy.com> wrote:

> On the topic of "clutchless shifting" (also called "speed shifting" and
> "rev matching", when I was farting around with it in my youth)...  A
> new-ish Audi isn't the machine to be learning it on.  Who actually thinks
> it's a good idea to risk damaging a transmission to save the cost of a
> clutch?  If your friend thinks a clutch replacement is expensive, I can
> only imagine what they'd think of a transmission rebuild.