[TR] why could my brother change gear in an old Triumph without using the clutch

[Tony Drews]

You can do this is most any car with a manual 
gearbox.  I've done it in my old VW beetle, 
various cars my dad owned (VW Scirocco, Honda 
Accord, probably even a van), certainly in my TR 
race car occasionally when I had the synchro 
box.  Drove home in my Miata with no clutch this 
way.  Had to kill it at the traffic signals, 
start up in 1st gear on the starter - leaving 
plenty of room for the other traffic.

To get it out of the current gear you coast - 
neither accelerate or decelerate.  To go to the 
next gear (either up or down) in a synchro box I 
hold it gently toward the gear I want to get into 
while either revving up the engine (downshift) or 
waiting for revs to drop (upshift).  When RPM's 
match it just drops into gear.  Kinda fun.

In a dog box, the technique is completely 
different.  With normal synchro box you want to 
be very gentle with it.  Caress it into gear with 
your hand and foot.  In a dog box you pretty much 
slam it into gear.  It does NOT want you to be 
gentle.  The dog box has no synchro that you need 
to make it through by matching revs, and the 
"dogs" don't like to slide against their 
counterpart.  Think of a peg and a hole - when 
you get over the hole you want to drop the peg 
directly in, not slide over the top several 
times.  You wear things less if you shift 
quickly.  You can still use the clutch to lessen 
driveline shock, definitely want to do the right 
thing with the gas.  There's not much better 
feeling than the 3 to 4 shift without the clutch 
just a quick lift on the gas - I suppose holding 
a slight powerslide through a fast turn ranks up there too.  :)

Regards, Tony Drews

At 06:57 PM 1/16/2017, Sujit Roy wrote:
>We had a Triumph Toledo and the gearbox whined like no bodies business.
>He had this skill, which I could do, to change 
>gear either up or down without using the clutch. Â
>
>He mentioned that he needed to get the engine speed in sync with the gearbox.
>If the gearbox was new, could he still do this?
>
>I'm assuming this is how people with dog gears 
>do this without the gears grinding.
>
>Sujit
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