One thing I can tell you above all else: You're overthinking and overworrying. That's normal. With time you'll improve, and with time you will also care less.
So, I had a 2008 VW Rabbit 2.5 NA. It had gobs of torque right from idle (whereas yours has a flat spot for the first 500RPM until the turbo kicks in), very short gears (you have a MUCH more reasonable final drive, quite excellent), very close ratios (you have them too), and awful rev hang (as you have). My current car (1980 Buick Lesabre) has no power at any speed, tall gears, wide ratios, and a fussy carburetor that just revs too high sometimes.
Most of all, what I can see is that you need to do some throttle and clutch exercises. Click the meta-sig link in my sig. Somewhere in there is a description of the exercises where you sit around in your driveway/parking lot revving it in neutral to practice blipping and where you ride around an empty parking lot doing no-gas launches to get a better feel for the clutch. Training your muscle memory for these things will eliminate a lot of the worries you've described.
1)
1/2 a mile from the turn my brain starts kicking into overload
Stop that. What did you do when driving automatic? Do the same thing, except step on the clutch pedal too. When you're almost ready to accelerate again, shift and (optionally) rev-match, and ease off the clutch pedal as quickly or slowly as necessary to make it smooth.
I typically start braking down while staying in the higher gear and right as soon as I get about 10 feet from the turn I floor the clutch
Good so far.
I start to gently bring up the clutch right at the point before I'm about to turn, with no gas until I know 2nd is engaged.
If that's when you'd like to begin accelerating then that's good. If not, wait.
The problem is about 50% of the time I get this "fish hook" jerk
Standard jerk question: Does it push your head towards the engine, or does it push your head towards the trunk?
Other times I feel like it's a smooth and clean transition but the problem is I'm not sure where I'm going wrong
Most likely the problem is that you need a few years of practice.
When I slow down to about 12-15 mph I feel like the engagement is a lot less noticeable and relatively no jerk but if I even go above 15 mph to say 20 mph that the fish hook/hiccup jerk is more prevalent.
Are we talking about the same gear at different speeds? If so, of course the jerk is going to be more severe at higher speed. Higher speed in the same gear is higher RPM. Higher RPM is more power (if engine is going too fast) or more engine braking (if engine is going too slow). Even if the
error is the same quantity of RPM (so maybe you're 400RPM off your target in both scenarios), at the higher speed that same error will cause a more severe jerk.
I don't really know the rules of skipping down gears and so fourth or what's efficient and what is better for wear and tear purposes.
While there are some relatively concrete rules, mostly it varies by scenario, opinion, mood, time of day, price of tea in China, solar flares, temperature, and the gravitational constant of the universe.
I can't tell you guys how many times I've heard "when turning you should only be focused on steering and your wheels should be focused on traction only for turning".
I would suggest that you should leave those things to your subconscious level and focus on traffic, pedestrians, road hazards, etc. One thing you shouldn't spend too much attention on is shifting. In a few years you'll be able to do it subconsciously whenever necessary. For now, your driving is just gonna suck for a while.
What I was doing before essentially which may make you guys cringe but I was only doing it for a week was rev matching downshifting chronologically from the higher gear to 2nd. So: 4>3>3>2...
Unnecessary but fun.
I am decent at rev matching going down one gear
Honestly, with your close ratios it's probably pointless to rev-match a sequential shift. You shift one gear and your RPM barely differs. Even with wider ratios it's generally unnecessary. I suppose if you generally hang around in much lower gears/higher engine speeds than I do then it might be a little more worthwhile (larger gaps and more power/engine braking).
honestly the blips and down shifts were giving me dirty looks from other drivers lol.
I hate drawing attention unnecessarily. I totally get where you're coming from.
I don't know how much truth there is in this but I feel like the fish hook jerk could definitely be "speed relative" to a degree. For instance, naturally if I was slowing down to stopped traffic but they started resuming motion and I didn't come all the way down to a stop... if I was resuming back into acceleration around 17-19 mph; I would choose third. If I was resuming back acceleration in the same scenario and around 12-14 mph; I would choose second.
Remember what I mentioned earlier about engine speed contributing to severity of jerk? Well, gear choice contributes inversely. In a different gear, the leverage between the engine and the road changes. In a higher gear the excess power or engine braking has less ability to jerk you around. In my previous explanation I considered a scenario where the gear remains the same and speed differs, so engine RPM is higher and makes the jerk more severe. In this scenario imagine different road speeds and the same RPM in different gears; the higher gear will have a less severe jerk. So at 2000RPM in 2nd at 20mph the jerk will be worse than 2000RPM in 3rd at 30mph. (Numbers pulled directly out of my ass.)
I'm not even sure how my technique is when re-engaging 2nd skipping down without a rev match...
What do you mean? You floored the clutch pedal but then decided not to shift after all? Those are easy, either give it a little gas for a rev-match or be real gentle and slow with the clutch pedal. I mean, those are easy with practice...when you're new it's tough to successfully accomplish either option.
I don't know if I'd feel comfortable being in A) neutral/no gear at all or B) too high of a gear to be useful.
These are acceptable. In reality no car has acceleration power even remotely similar to its braking and steering ability; 99% of scenarios where someone thinks acceleration was the only option to avoid a problem, they are wrong and/or they made a bad choice a second earlier. For that sort of driver I recommend driving automatic, which will downshift immediately to the lowest possible gear when you slam the accelerator pedal to the floor. (At least, the ones I've driven will.) Anything less than the lowest gear and there's not enough power to accelerate out of a dangerous situation...and even then you need a powerful engine.
2)
I'm traveling in 6th at 60-65 mph and I want to make a pass emphatically around a slower moving vehicle.
What's your RPM? In my Rabbit I could just step on it slightly more and the dang thing would surge forward because it was already buzzing along at a ludicrous 3000RPM. I suspect that you have far better gears and need to downshift (AKA you get an excuse for a fun downshift).
The issue I'm having is when I try and blip the throttle I can't match rev's that well or close to where it should be (I'm typically off by 300-400 rpms underneath it). ... in the other thread said to guide the throttle "holding" it semi to the correct rpm but whenever I try and do that I'm really ungraceful and usually over rev...
Don't bother with the steady-throttle rev-match in your car. When trying to steady-throttle a drive-by-wire VW, it would be faster to send your throttle inputs by postal mail than using your foot on the pedal. Don't bother with trying to tune your rev-match blipping by pressing the pedal to different depths either. Just stab it and take your foot right off again. STABBY STAB STAB!
(but just one stab)
there's a ton of red light cameras around here
I don't know NYC like the back of my hand but I've driven in it more than a few times and I can't remember anywhere that you could possibly go 65 and deal with traffic lights. Actually I can't remember anywhere it was possible to get above 20 unless you're driving this car:
Anyway, the correct response to red light cameras is to stop short at every goddamn fresh yellow light, get rear-ended, and sue the idiots who put them up.
I can't seem to blip "hard enough" to go down in necessarily two
Have you made that accelerator pedal your bitch? Have you stomped it like the KGB's boot heels stomped the proletariat? Pretend you've spotted a spider on it. Worse, pretend you've spotted a US Presidential candidate on it. Don't be shy, until that day that it makes a ridiculous "VROOOM!!!" and everbody looks at you and you feel silly...then maybe back it off a notch.
I kind of gotten scared reading about Low Speed Pre-Ignition problems when you use moderate amounts of throttle in a short period of time when the engine is running low.
I assure you, your late-model car CANNOT experience pre-ignition as a result of anything you do while driving, even WOT below idle in high gear. It would probably take a pretty severe component failure before it could happen, and even then I bet the computer would successfully prevent it. If it's accelerating smoothly, even only very gradually, then downshifting or staying in gear is entirely up to your preference...you can downshift and be more excited, or stay in gear and be more dignified.
My 2008 VW was also pre-ignition-proof.
My 1980 Buick with NO computer whatsoever has Flintstone technology that controls ignition timing. There is a hose, a goddamned hose, that connects manifold vacuum to a gizmo that adjusts ignition timing a little. It's completely silly. Why in the world would anyone do that after 1950? Nonetheless, it was normal on most brands until the 1980s. This is a car where it is advisable to worry about pre-ignition. If I choose too high of a gear, I get a CHUFFGNARCHUFFABCHUFFGARACHUFFBGAARBCHUFFGRRBACHUFFRAGBCHUFFARGLECHUFF sound that tells me I chose the wrong gear. It sounds kinda like a diesel truck is driving next to me. This guy has it worse:
I heard about a few eco-boosts blowing out black smoke matting it in 6th so I kind of gotten scared.
Totally different thing. Black smoke (and sometimes white smoke) means fuel mixture is too rich. Some people adjust their engine to do it on purpose; they call it "rolling coal" and everybody calls them "douchebags". Some manufacturers tune in just a little bit of it; my mom had a 2005 Acura RL (NA, not turbo) that did it a little bit and her white rear bumper was always stained from exhaust. The idea is that a little wasted fuel is better than allowing it to go lean at WOT and a million RPM.
3)
Third scenario is more an open discussion about parking lot maneuvers and slow moving situations. I'm absolutely terrible and my mind just needs a better understanding of an approach to be taken here.
Nope. Your butt needs more seat time.
enter the parking lot in 2nd gear- I kind of hope that I have to stop completely so I can re-engage smoothly into 1st without pissing off someone behind me. This isn't always the case and I am unsure of what I should be doing pretty much to get into 1st smoothly or how I can stay in 2nd without juddering/stalling. If I'm on the move at about 8-9 mph in 2nd- my car physically won't even let me go into 1st gear without much resistance until I'm 7 mph<.
Two options...
1. Slip the clutch in 2nd. You don't want to do this all the way across the mall parking lot, but for getting through a temporary situation it is fine, that's what the clutch is there for. Keep that clutch pedal part way up, in a position where the engine is revving faster than it should for that gear but is not completely free like neutral (in my 2008 VW it was probably 85% up). As a noob, you won't be any good at this.
2. Double-clutch into 1st. Clutch pedal down and shift to neutral, blip (STAB!), clutch pedal 75% up then immediately down again (this is a reverse stab motion), complete shift, clutch pedal up (blip again if necessary, or adjust clutch foot speed as necessary). As a noob, you won't be any good at this.
Notice anything in common between the two options?
4)
Any tips on what I can do to slow down the rev's from dropping so fast?
What you're experiencing is the lack of rev hang...an actually obedient throttle. That used to be the way at all times. Drivers were expected to feed it a little gas to keep engine speed up during a slow shift. Of course, those obedient throttles were obedient in
every way so it was easy to just feed it a little gas...that's kinda tough to do with yours. The trick is to time it just right. Once you're in gear you're gonna step on that accelerator pedal, right? Well, just do that a
little bit sooner, just before the clutch bites instead of just after. Fine-tuning this timing will come with practice. Using your entire foot on the entire accelerator pedal helps, too, especially with that bottom-hinged VW pedal; you can have much finer control of the pedal at the top than the middle or bottom.
I literally wait a conscious amount of time before even lifting my foot into the biting point, more or less waiting for the revs to fall and trying to catch them at the correct rpm.
Don't wait for rev hang. You've got better things to do, like continue accelerating. Just let the clutch absorb it so you can get on with life. Man, I hate waiting around for rev hang.
