Teamwork wrote:I floor the clutch at around 1000-1200 rpm to prepare for a full stop- I physically feel like and can hear what I am guessing is the fly wheel releasing. Is this generally normal or does it also play into how fast I'm physically putting the pedal to the firewall? I never disengage and floor the clutch when I'm coming to an intended full stop until I'm about in the ball park of 1000-1200 rpm in whatever gear I'm in. I'm not sure if it's relative to the RPM that it's being released at or has nothing to do with it.
I doubt you're hearing the clutch disc releasing from the flywheel. (It's the clutch disc that is released, not the flywheel. The clutch disc can move along the input shaft, closer and further from the flywheel; the flywheel stays in place. Also, for simplicity I haven't mentioned the pressure plate, but don't be surprised if you read about it...it is what pushes the clutch disc against the flywheel.)
The input shaft spins with the flywheel. It goes into the gearbox and has some gears and synchronizers and stuff. The gears are meshed with gears on the output shaft (perhaps through a third shaft).
GACK! I mucked that up. The input shaft spins with the
clutch disc. (Of course with the clutch fully engaged, the input shaft also spins with the flywheel.)
Probably a question that you'll cringe at but what is the average life expectancy of synchronizers during a car's life?
They are designed to last as long as the rest of the car and are not considered a regular replacement/wear item. In reality some people chew them up in 150,000 miles or even less, while others never notice any wear.
How would you know when a synchronizer is shot or malfunctioning?
You get grinding during normal shifts and have to double-clutch to prevent it.
So there is a human aspect of being you're own synchronizer
That's double-clutching. For unsynchronized transmissions, or transmissions with worn or lame synchronizers, double-clutching avoids grinding. For decent transmissions, double-clutching can sometimes speed up a huge downshift that would normally take a few seconds before the shifter goes into gear, like a 20mph downshift into 1st.
Unrelated to a degree but why is it when you add a touch of gas between upshifts at the friction point that it "smooths" things out. What is the background science behind that doing what it does..
When adding a touch of gas helps it's because the engine was going too slow for the chosen gear at the current road speed. If you didn't add the gas and just dumped the clutch, the car would nose-dive as if you stepped on the brake and the tachometer would shoot up; the engine gets sped up by the road (through the drivetrain), and for every action there's an equal and opposite reaction, which in this case is engine braking.
Is it possible to upshift as "smooth" without adding any gas during the process or is it something that relatively needs to be done?
Depends on the car, the situation, the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow, the gravitational constant of the universe, the level of brownian motion in today's coffee, and the current age (in seconds) of Richard Petty.
...but seriously. Every pre-computer carbureted car will require you to give it a little gas for an average upshift or else the engine will idle down too much. Every obedient computerized car that doesn't think it knows better than the driver will too. Meddling know-it-all computers that insist that they know what is good for you may sometimes or always keep engine RPM high. Lately, those with drive-by-wire throttles are sometimes programmed to keep RPM far too high, resulting in a situation that you can't fix (rev hang) and you just have to ease in the clutch just-right to drag down the engine RPM without waiting all day so you can get on with accelerating again.
When you "ride the friction point" or "smooth it out with the clutch" (aka slip the clutch), you cause much of the shock energy (the difference in speed between the flywheel [engine speed] and clutch [multiplied/divided road speed because you're in-gear]) to be dissipated as heat via clutch/flywheel friction instead of winding up everything else so much.
And maybe the most important question of them all... is this generally accepted as a process to do? Is it looked down upon?
It is generally accepted.
For some situations I advise doing better than what is generally accepted, though. Certainly when it's as easy as stepping on the gas a little instead, that is much better than
generally accepted.