StandardShift.com

thats exactly why I want a manual,

as my parents always say,
"if you want something done right, then do it yourself"

I see shifting like that. If you want the car to be in the right gear, then shift it yourself.

Amen to that, brotha.

thats my new motto

Heh, I've shifted my automatic car like a manual. Its a '88 Pontiac Fiero GT with a 3-speed automatic. You don't need to touch the brakes at all to move it from ANY gear (that's how it was designed, no pansy-ass safety restraints!), and you only need to use the little gear-selector button to get in and out of Park and Reverse. I've taken the car into the mountains and on autocross, and to save my brakes from overheating I'll engine brake by downshifting manually. Basically, for about a couple days a year, the transmission gets beat on like a manual. Both it and the car are mint (44,000 miles), and so far no problems. In autocross in some corners it did slip a little in 1st gear, but during normal driving (360/365 days a year) it shifts like its brand new. Possibly its a little less complex because its only a 3-speed (has locking torque converter), simple is always better. The tranny is almost bulletproof with a stock engine, just don't stick anything with more than 300 ft lbs of torque behind it or the case will crack and the transmission will explode. Heck, even if it does explode, I've been wanting to swap a 5-speed into it anyways .

Don't get me wrong, I prefer a manual transmission. With the auto I tend to shift a little earlier (4500-5000, instead of 5500-6000 like in my 4-speed). There's nothing like being on the Cherohala Skyway up in Tennessee, spinning 5500 rpms in 3rd gear, slamming the brakes and dropping down to 2nd gear at 6000 rpms with that manual transmission. Its a toss up in reliability between the two cars though, I'm not sure how much I trust a 4-speed manual with 140,000 miles and 20 years on it, compared with an auto with only 44,000 on it.

I love my manual, its just so much more fun to drive. even if manuals and Auto were the same in performance i would still rather have a manual.

mulvihill wrote:I love my manual, its just so much more fun to drive. even if manuals and Auto were the same in performance i would still rather have a manual.

EXACTLY!!!!!

damn, how'd i miss this one i could swear i posted in a thread just like this about my experiences with shifting my automatics manually

when i had my 91 corolla dx 3 speed auto i used to sometimes shift it manually. problem came when i decided i could downshift it myself too. i would just move the stick to the lower gear and bam the car slowed down. no wonder the tranny was going soft on me

then i had a 93 accord lx 4 speed auto. that one i'd leave in D3 around town and it worked great. felt a LOT like driving a manual. then i got into shifting it manually, both up and down. this time, i rev-matched my downshifts while the shifter was between gears. you might not expect this to work, but it did on that car. didn't work on mom's 93 sentra though, that i can tell you . and i never had to brake on upshifts like the guy with the 97 accord; just let up on the gas and slide the shifter into the next gear. the last gen prelude autos with the manumatic were known to go out by 60k miles, whether they had been shifted manually or left in D4. i think it's the earlier (5th and 6th gen) V6 accords that had the tranny issues and not so much the I4 slushies (at least not the newer ones). looking back, i think it's silly to shift a slushy manually, other than keeping it in D3 and out of overdrive for around town driving where you don't want to be going back and forth between D3 and D4 all the time.

how do u drift in a FWD car? haha

Oldladykiller wrote:how do u drift in a FWD car? haha

In reverse, duh.

i used to do this when i never drove a shit and I wanted one so bad. I would actually grab a water bottle, put it in the holder and pretend thats the stick.

That's something to do in an extremely boring moment in life, grab a water bottle or straw and pretend you're shifting through the gears.

i used to do this when i never drove a shit and I wanted one so bad.

Also, I would edit that sentence above. Hopefully we don't have a new magical word filter...

Holy thread revival batman!

I think my post on this page was 1 of the first I made here on SS....I posted it on 11/5/2006, and I registered here 11/4/2006.

this thread brings back a lot of memories