Im guessing its a bad thing? Or is it normal for cold weather?

 

I found my '06 xA's gearbox to be significantly smoother and nicer than my old 200,000 mile '93 Subaru Legacy It also compares quite well to my Toyota MR2 gearbox, and isn't actually all that far short of my Z06 either. The Scion's gearbox feels crisp, firm, snappy, the throw is a nice length (neither short nor long), and always goes into place smoothly. But the qualifier is that I do double clutch and throttle blip all my downshifts, so that the synchros have next to no work to do. There's never much resisitance to any gear shift if this is down properly.

The difficulty in the 2nd to 1st shift is that the synchros are being asked to do too much work. The clutch shaft needs to be spun up quite a few thousand rpm before the gears will engage. When the clutch is depressed and you transition into neutral, the clutch shaft is spinning down from friction since it is no longer connected to anything, while the synchros are trying to speed it up from the 2000 or so rpm it was at in 2nd gear to the 4000 rpm it needs to be to engage 1st. Pushing really hard on the shift will eventually force the synchros to transfer enough energy to the clutch shaft to get the speeds to match, but it's very abusive on the synchros, and you might bend your shifter if you push too hard.

The solution is to release the clutch in the middle of the shift while you are in neutral to engage the clutch shaft to the motor, then blip the throttle to bring the clutch shaft up to the required engine speed of the next gear down, and then depress the clutch pedal again and make the gear engagement. It's a bit of a handful to coordinate smoothly, but practice makes the process fast and smooth

What makes it even more fun is that you usually want to be doing this while you're braking, requiring you to use 3 pedals at once. Except we only have 2 feet. People deal with this by using the right foot on both brake and throttle, either by pressing the brake with the ball of your foot and twisting your ankle to hit the throttle with your heel, or by pressing the brake with the left side of the ball of your foot and rotating your foot to press the brake with the right side of the ball of your foot. The traditional name of this downshifting technique is "heel and toe". Use that phrase if you want to search google for more information.

ps: trying to shift into reverse at 70mph makes bad noises... I did that once when I went reaching for 6th gear (in my defence I claim that I was distracted, and forgot that I wasn't in the Z06). I suggest not doing this

 

I used to practice that in my RSX Type S...good times. Ill try it on this one. Thanks for the post.

 

what year zo6? the other thing is we shouldn't have to do this with a sychronized transmission. i'll accept it once i get some better pedals to heel toe.

 

Synchros are good, but they can't do magic - there's only so much they can do to help on a gear shift. Changing into 1st from 2nd is always difficult due to that being the highest gear ratio difference of any gears in the box - 1st gear is typically nearly twice the ratio of 2nd. My Z06 is a little different there in that 1st goes to 50mph while 2nd goes to 70, so there's not actually much shaft speed difference for the synchros to have to overcome.

Another bonus of blipping up the motor during downshifts that the clutch has no work to do. It makes me wince when I hear/see people make a downshift and then use the clutch to drag the engine rpm up to speed.

A good shifting technique that helps the synchros out can only be a good thing - smoother shifts, longer gearbox lifetime, longer clutch lifetime. And throttle blipping sounds cool

Be thankful that we're not 50+ years in the past before synchros were invented... you either got your heel toe downshift blipping perfect, or horrible noises and failed shifts would result!

 

If you have never Heel-Toe'ed before: Please do not practice in traffic. Find an open road to practice on, we would'nt want any accidents.

 

That is something I really need to learn how to do.. never done it at all before.

 

Long after synchros were invented, they were still not put on 1st gear. All the manual transmissions of the 1950s and 1960s had unsynchronized 1st gears. You had to come to a stop to get into 1st gear. But the engines had so much torque that you did not need use 1st gear except from a dead stop.