Can anybodt shift this @#*! thing smoothly?

[JC_451]

You can be very practiced with manuals and still need a lot of practice to become smooth with this gearbox. Smooth is fast.

Once you start thinking about it too much and watching the tach you're making it too complicated.

 

[bentin]

Works fine for me. Killing the CDV valve fixed my major complaint. It's still worlds better than my BMW manuals, which also had dual mass flywheels.

 

[mac340]

To clarify, yes the GTI does shift buttery smooth. However, what I think most people are complaining about is the fact you have to be deliberately slower with your shifts than you would in other cars in order for it to be smooth. It's not that it can't shift smooth or people can't figure out how to shift it smoothly, the problem is the way you need to shift in order to be smooth in this car.

For me it feels like there's a delay to everything that you have to wait for.

Have you taken out the restrictor in the bleeder block? For me it makes it 100% smoother for everything from leaving from a stop to between gears.

 

[Parabola]

Deleting CDV and removing assist spring from the pedal improved the clutch operation for me. My next step was to upgrade the bushings, but haven't done it yet.

 

[bentin]

Deleting CDV and removing assist spring from the pedal improved the clutch operation for me. My next step was to upgrade the bushings, but haven't done it yet.

The bushings are nice, but a pretty minor difference. The CDV delete is certainly the breadwinner in the available steps, well that and changing to a better brake fluid.

 

[Golfs everyday]

I removed the helper spring a while back which made almost no difference in feel, bleeder is still stock. Car drives butter smooth for me. On the Golf-R the flywheel is light so need to shift up with almost no pause. I drove my buddy's MK7 GTI a few years ago and it was similar in feel. Car drove smooth.. so it's probably not the car.

 

[Subliminal]

Removing the spring just adds a tiny bit more weight when rolling off the clutch. Removing the delay valve, upgrading the mounts (even just a dogbone insert), SMF clutch all have a noticeable improvement in removing the 'lag' when engaging the clutch. With all those done my ACT clutch feels like it connects pretty much instantly between shifts and very smoothly as well.

As far as the 1->2 shift on a stock setup, rolling off the top of the clutch where it starts to bite a little bit slower and getting on the throttle sooner is what usually helped me

 

[bentin]

That's a good point, I sometimes forget that the clutch stop helped speed things up from the standard stupidly long throw. And yes, just the dogbone insert does wonders for minimizing the drivetrain lash.

 

[Dog Dad Wagon]

Posted about my findings with rev hang in another thread but got no response - this one is more fitting I think.

Based on some videos online of people disconnecting their upper clutch switch to get rid of the rev hang (on a Fiesta and Veloster), I figured this switch may have something to do with the rev hang. First I tried simply disconnecting it, but the gas became super sensitive and the idle weirdly got higher. I did not drive it though so need to revisit this.

I also made a circuit to change the behavior of the upper clutch switch, so that it would match the lower switch in terms of its signal. However this made the car almost undrivable and didn’t fix the rev hang.

I believe it’s really just a matter of tuning the ecu. It’s unfortunate that when I’ve asked around, no one seems to know if it’s possible, or hasn’t tried looking. I wonder if a lot of people have DSGs so there isn’t an incentive to try to cure this problem. Until someone figures it out I will be holding up traffic with my 1 to 2 shifts

Anyone else have some insight? I know we can deal with it but it would be great to solve this problem at the source.

Yeah I get a lot of angry people up my ass, often flooring it around me on the 1-2 shift. It takes that long to make it smooth.

 

[Subliminal]

The only time I felt like I couldn't shift fast enough to keep up with traffic is when I was learning to drive my first manual car. The guys on here who say "I've been driving stick for 20+ years" are the ones who seem to have the most difficulty getting adjusted

 

[bentin]

The only time I felt like I couldn't shift fast enough to keep up with traffic is when I was learning to drive my first manual car. The guys on here who say "I've been driving stick for 20+ years" are the ones who seem to have the most difficulty getting adjusted

Hehe, it does seem that way. I'm 32 years into driving nothing but manuals, this is one of the easier cars I've had to drive smoothly. I didn't modify my 17 at all and have done just about all of the mods to my 18 and both have been pretty easy to drive smoothly and quickly. Go drive a BRZ if you want to feel a weird clutch. Or an STI/WRX.

 

[2018gti]

Yeah I get a lot of angry people up my ass, often flooring it around me on the 1-2 shift. It takes that long to make it smooth.

This is exactly what makes it annoying for me - agreed. It’s like you can either shift smooth or fast, but not both. I’ve learned how to get a mix of both but never get it right 100% of the time.

Meanwhile on my Ninja I can take off faster than any car, smoothly, and it takes about 0 concentration to do it every time. It’s so much more natural and analog. When I take my hand off the throttle, the revs fall, simple as that.

 

[bentin]

This is exactly what makes it annoying for me - agreed. It’s like you can either shift smooth or fast, but not both. I’ve learned how to get a mix of both but never get it right 100% of the time.

Meanwhile on my Ninja I can take off faster than any car, smoothly, and it takes about 0 concentration to do it every time. It’s so much more natural and analog. When I take my hand off the throttle, the revs fall, simple as that.

Throw a dual mass flywheel on the Ninja just so you get used to it everywhere!

 

[2018gti]

Throw a dual mass flywheel on the Ninja just so you get used to it everywhere!

No thanks lol

 

[VQVW]

The only time I felt like I couldn't shift fast enough to keep up with traffic is when I was learning to drive my first manual car. The guys on here who say "I've been driving stick for 20+ years" are the ones who seem to have the most difficulty getting adjusted

Hehe, it does seem that way. I'm 32 years into driving nothing but manuals, this is one of the easier cars I've had to drive smoothly. I didn't modify my 17 at all and have done just about all of the mods to my 18 and both have been pretty easy to drive smoothly and quickly. Go drive a BRZ if you want to feel a weird clutch. Or an STI/WRX.

This is exactly what makes it annoying for me - agreed. It’s like you can either shift smooth or fast, but not both. I’ve learned how to get a mix of both but never get it right 100% of the time.

Meanwhile on my Ninja I can take off faster than any car, smoothly, and it takes about 0 concentration to do it every time. It’s so much more natural and analog. When I take my hand off the throttle, the revs fall, simple as that.

The first two don't get it. 2018gti gets it.

All the discussions of rev hang I've seen go this way. Half the people complain about rev hang, and half swear they have no rev hang, or that they can shift perfectly smoothly.

It's not a question of whether you can shift fast. It's a question of passive rev matching. Some of us actually care about preserving our synchros for the life of the car. Let me try to be clear: when shifting fast from 1-2 (the worst shift because of the large ratio difference), we're not saying we can't get it into 2nd right away. And we're not saying we're jerking the car around. I can shift lightning fast from 1-2 in my Alltrack if I wanted to and a passenger would find the transition smooth from their perspective.

The problem is you can feel the resistance of the 2nd gear synchros as you jam it in. If you let out clutch at 3000 RPM in 1st and shift to 2nd quickly, the RPM might be 2500 when you shift, but 2nd gear wants to be in 1500 (or something like that). That is a significant difference that the synchromesh has to work to equalize in a fraction of a section, and that wears it down, shift after shift, day after day.

The goal for the rest of us is to work with the transmission, not against it. It also feels incredible when you get a perfectly rev-matched shift--there is almost zero resistance to the lever as it slides in. Mmm hmm. Oh yeah.

If your idea of shifting "smoothly" is the shifter goes into gear quickly and the car doesn't jerk, you are totally missing the point. You can drive a manual car "smoothly" by relying on the synchros to rev match for you (=transmission wear) and feathering the clutch a ton (=major clutch wear). The rest of us are trying to avoid those things. Rev hang makes it hard.