I downshift all the time. The transmission is made for it. It does not use more fuel. It allows you to quickly and smoothly adjust your speed to match others when brakes would be overkill (following traffic). The OP did not ask about "excessive" braking. Anything "excessive" is usually bad - I think we all get that.

 

To hear the exhaust as the tranny rev-matches.. Even autos sound good.

Seriously though - manual guys do it religiously, the same dangers exist for them that do for auto drivers, if not moreso. The average manual driver sucks at rev matching (from what I observe)..

 

with a stick there is much more danger of over rev... our autos are very safegarded compared to a stick on downshifts...

 

You'll only rev to the limiter, I think the greater shock would be to the drive line as you lock the rears when they can't keep up...

 

oh yeah, try throwing first at 60 & see if the motor stops at the rev limiter...

not gonna happen due, the rev limiter will limit fuel, spark etc to keep from overrevs on the throttle, but with a manual the gearing of the car will rev the motor way past redline... there is no rev limiter that can stop mechanicly driven revs... as long as the wheels don't lock up you'll push that motor way up past redline...

 

^^ +1 agree, it is ridiculous to say the rev limiter is going to stop the revs on the manual. In this case, the CAR is turning the engine, not the engine moving the car. The rev limiter only cuts fuel/air to the engine.

Most likely, the engine is going to turn to match the wheels * gear ratio, probably to it's demise.

 

Same here....get to hear a nice burble from my exhaust when downshifting, plus, I get to save my brakes a bit IMO.

 

The answer is '42'. The big red letters were key to my arriving at this conclusion.

I doubt it hurts the tranny when done within reason, I do it on my non-rev-matching '03 when in light traffic.

 

I do it all the time. I have been trying to do it less, though, but my rotors are warped and so I end up letting the engine/tranny slow me down sometimes. I still try to match revs, though, even though if I'm trying to slow down I shouldn't. Speaking of that, where would you guys take your rotors to get them resurfaced? I'm gonna take them off the car and take them in somewhere to save some dough (and to make sure Joe Mechanic has no opportunity to screw up my car when it's not necessary for him to be under there). Where would you guys take yours? How much would you expect to pay? Gracias.

 

Huh? You most definitely should match revs even if you're trying to slow down. You want the engine compression to slow your car down... not the clutch grabbing a slow moving flywheel and trying to force it to spin up.

 

If you drop into first at 60 and drop the clutch, it's very likely your rears will lock.

As for the rest, you're right. Don't know what I was thinking.

 

My point is that if you want to slow the car the fastest without braking that it would be necessary to trasnfer the kinetic energy to the engine by having the clutch speed up the fly wheel and then start slowing the car down even more. I never said it was healthy for the car. If you really wanna get down to it, it's healthier just to use the brakes. A new set of rotors and pads is generally gonna be less than a transmission.

 

Good point, but I don't know why some people think that downshifting is any different in an AT than upshifting. It's not. The trans is built for it with all the associated safety mechanisms (including redline). So, if you downshift all the time, you would actually be using the transmission twice as much as someone who uses the brakes instead. In that respect, the transmission may wear faster . Not downshifting is like saying MT owners shouldn't downshift either - it's more wear on the transmission/clutch, but in the "normal" operation of the car, you are supposed to. Just my 2 cents...