James wrote:Does it have a preferred time to change up a gear? Are you supposed to take it out of gear and then sustain revs on an upchange? If so this seems time consuming and not quite right.
The only thing to think about is matching engine revs to road speed for the chosen gear, so applying that, as you come out of the lower gear, you need to let the revs drop, then at the point they match the road speed for the higher gear, engage the gear.
What makes this tricky is (a) being too hasty and not letting the revs drop enough, or (b) taking too long and letting the revs drop too far. Of course once you
know how fast the engine needs to be, both of these are trivial to overcome
but the theory is easier than the practice
The easiest way to practice is with light acceleration in the lower gear up to the slightly beyond the point where it is reasonable to engage the next higher gear. For some reason, all gear changes tend to be trickier at higher revs, but perhaps it just requires more precision.
As an aside, my wife first came across this when she was taking a car back from an MOT station to the garage where she was working. She had come to a stop at a busy roundabout for an M25 junction, but was unable to get it in gear again. A police car turned up, and one of the officers got in and found that it was possible to get it in gear when the engine wasn't running, so drove it clutchless across the roundabout and on to the nearest lay-by. My wife was very impressed!
there is only the road, nothing but the road ...