How do you drive towards a red light? Becaus I see many people doing this 'wrong' too. Let's say, you driving in 4th gear, light turns red, what do you do? Alot of people just put their foot on the clutch and change gear till they stopped or the light turns green again.. I always downshift towards a red light, and only put the clutch down when the rpm is going below 1000. This way you save fuel and use the engine to brake.. So if you are driving towards a red light, downshift and what I do is let the clutch go up slowly becaus this helps braking too. When the light turns green again and you are in second and above 900/1000rpm, just accelerate.
When in third, around 1000rpm, light goes green, you can also downshift to second and tap the gas pedal, to match the engines rpm with your gearbox. I'm not sure this is good for fuel though.
I tend to rev-match in scenarios like that too, but I've been doing it so long now I've no idea whether it's more economical not to give a little blip like that when changing down. I suspect it's very, very slightly less economical because you are using a tiny bit extra fuel giving the engine a few revs, but not enough to notice (and I'm saying that as GTP's resident MPG-loving eco-weenie
).
As for slowing down towards a red, that all sounds about right. My own process would be to slow down in gear. If the light was still red and I had to stop, I'd depress the clutch just before tickover and then come to a halt, changing to first again as traffic starts pulling away.
If the traffic is moving again as I approach it but I still have to slow down, I'll usually slow down in gear and then slot it into whatever gear I think is suitable to go again. Anything over 3-4mph it'll be second. Basically, my car will happily pull from 1250-1500rpm at lower speeds, so if I'm in traffic and need to change down I'll select whatever gear drops me into that sort of rev range, unless I need more speed (say, pulling up to a roundabout).
If I can't accelerate with light pressure on the gas, I change down.
This is a good general rule to follow. If you want to accelerate with any reasonable vigour then best practice is to change down, rather than just put your foot down harder - at low revs, anyway.
If you're already pulling a few revs and the engine isn't labouring then you can happily put your foot down a little harder if you only need a bit extra speed (say, going from a 30mph zone to a 40mph zone if you're in no great hurry).
Depends on the engine too (and gearing). A turbodiesel might pull happily from 2k revs in top gear, where in a naturally-aspirated petrol you might be better off changing down a gear.
), the mileage suffers noticeably. But when I use this short shifting method, it becomes as docile as a 1 litre Honda.
