Quote:
Originally Posted by albertw
The problem with this strategy is that every time you slow down the engine with the clutch you heat up the clutch a bit. During enthusiastic driving on twisty roads I shift several times a minute and the clutch eventually gets hot enough to stink, which is not good. The flip side is that engines with hanging throttle often also have a throttle that is unresponsive to mild blips so during downshifts it takes half throttle to get any rev rise in the half second between gears, and you wind up overshooting the revs and putting more heat into the clutch. This was an e46 MT, and the only solution I found was to do 2 second gearshifts, which killed a lot of the fun.
Unfortunately the nearest M240i manual was six hours away with no certainty that I would get a test drive since obviously I wouldn't be buying there. (Apparently in this part of the world dealers only have a MT in stock if someone backs out of a factory order.) I wasn't going to risk having these problems with poor throttle response in a car I hope to keep for 10 years, so I ordered the automatic. I consoled myself by reminding myself I have clutches on my bikes.
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I suppose it could depend on the car some. I tracked my rev-hanging WRX @ VIR and never had any funny smells from the clutch. That car begged to be driven hard and was clearly designed to work with slipping the clutch a bit between gears. That said, the engine DID start to overheat eventually and it went into an electronically-controlled limp mode (wouldn't let RPM rise past a certain level), so that car was far from a purpose-built track car...