An Unsettling and Disturbing Guide to Handling, Modifying and Enjoying Your Car...

Index


Get a life! Or one person's diatribe on staying alive. Skippable, if you must.
Handling 101 - What's handling good for?
Handling 102 - Let's get technical about handling
Handling 103 - Adjusting your car's handling characteristics
Tyre pressures matter
Camber plays a part
Sometimes you must Toe the line!
Caster look over 'ere, mate!
Having a Polar Moment
Roll Over Beethoven
Oversteer
Understeer
Weight transfer explained
Shuffle off this mortal Coil
Tyres and Wheels can do more than just look good
Pitching a fast ball
Other stuff people often don't understand
Heel and Toe
Double declutch
Wheel offset
Rollbars
CVT - Constantly variable transmission
Twin camshaft motors
GTV - Grand Touring Veloce
GTi - Grand Touring Injection
GTam - Grand Touring America or maybe Allegerita Modificato
RS - Rally Sport or Renn Sport
GTO - Grand Touring Omologato
Heel and Toeing

Matching revs is really the point of this one. Why is that important? Well, when you use a manual gearbox you are asking the synchromesh to assist you to bring the engine speed up or down to match what is needed for the gear selected. If you didn't have synchro you wouldn't be able to select the gear, or if you managed to do it you'd get an almighty crunch. This is very inept and uncool and was called 'a crash box' technique.

Let me explain. When you go down from 3rd to second you need to 'blip' the throttle and raise the revs as the gear ratio will otherwise force the engine to increase revs to match the roadspeed. It's very uncool to just let the synchros do it, and can cause driven wheel lockup when done too suddenly especially on poor, loose surfaces. This often happens when decelerating, and often again when you need to brake as well. It's dangerous and unnecessary.

Instead let's blip that throttle and raise the revs as we downshift; in fact let's keep one foot on the brake but use the heel or side of the foot to raise the revs (ie blip) instead of lifting off the brake. It takes practice, but it's smoother, faster and better as you can therefore brake and change gear simultaneously. Racers use it, you should too.

Frankly, if you don't heel and toe then you are a danger on the road and should consider swapping to an automatic transmission. You certainly won't post good lap times on the track if you can't get the basics happening! (Yeah, I'm opinionated but it's true. Want to do even better gearchanges, look up double-declutch.)




Support This Site Design and Sell Merchandise Online 

for Free


Return to the GTVeloce Alfa pages

Comments or suggestions?

Send them to webmaster@gtveloce.com , where Robert, venerable and ancient though he is, will sort through them and, if motivated, maybe even reply!
Cars, bikes and com-munitiesAlfa Romeos and cars in generalFort Street Class of 75 ReunionVaried Image GalleryAviationThe Spiel - futurism and businessBikes!

The KlausenRussell.com-munityCopyright 2008 Robert K. Russell; updated September 26, 2005. Many of the images on this site are for sale, including at higher resolutions more suitable for printing. They may be purchased and downloaded from my shopfront.

QuickLinks: Addicted2Wheels Autoexpo 2000 GTVeloce Automotive Gallery GTVeloce.com GTVeloce Image Library Fort Street High School Class of 75 All purpose Chatroom Userplane Chat Fortian Image Gallery 1975 Flora Gallery Miscellaneous Image Gallery Bike Racing Gallery Airliner Gallery Airline Postcard Gallery Gerry's Gallery GTVeloce rave on Alfa Romeos Alfa Gallery Automotive How-to Index Staying Alive Handling 101 Handling 102 Handling 103 Tyrepressures Camber Toe Caster Polar Moment Roll Oversteer Understeer Weight transfer Coil springs Wheels and Tyres Pitch Heel and Toe Double Declutch Offset Rollbars BMEP calculator Cornering load calculator GTVeloce Blog Offline Blog Out Out Damned Blog Addicted2Wheels Blog The Spiel on business MBA Resources HR Resources KM Reframed Bike Racing forum KlausenRussell Com-munity Chain Chatter Unofficial RBCC info Official RBCC info Unofficial CCCC info Official CCCC info Rob's Guide to Road, Crit and Track Racing Rob's Guide, part 2 Track race tips Sydney's Velodromes What do those lines mean? Automobile links Mustknow links Philosophy links Music Links Images of the Russell, Matthews, O'Brien and Brown families in Australia Rob's Amateur Art Gallery The GTVeloce GiftShop The GTVeloce Shopfront Rob Russell's images at Image Tank