Hi all,

Since the x30 patch I have spent a lot of time learning to heel and toe with manual clutch on my G25, including modifying my pedals to help. Although I feel I am getting better my times are still much slower than they should be.

To compare, I just did a few laps without blipping on my downshifts and my times were immediately 1+ seconds faster. It seemed that the wheels locking in the corners wasn't that much of a hinderance compared to the actual process of heel toeing.

I'm pretty sure that the difference is due to not keeping a consistent brake pressure whilst heel toeing, but I'm not sure how to cure it.

Does anyone here actually race online using manual clutch and heel toe, or is it a case of 'showing off' whilst messing about in single player? I want to play LFS as realistically as possible, but it is off putting lagging behing those using a simpler control method.

Thanks in advance.

imo heel toeing is especially usefull under heavy braking and down shifting (before a turn). If you shift down and just let go of the clutch, you get a jerk on the drivetrain (heavy engine braking), causing some instability on your car - you could even spin out. But if you heel toe while braking and downshifting, you attempt to avoid this jerk, and keep a stable car.

edit - oh, so imo it doesn't make you faster, it keeps your car more stable (ok and therefore maybe a bit faster in corners too)

It entirely depends on

1) Your general pace
If you're still too inconsistent and slow (lets say, outside of the 103% WR benchmark), then the stability of heel-toeing is probably one of your smaller problems.

2) Your heel-toeing proficiency
If you've just learned how to heel-toe and are still struggling with it, then of course it won't help you at all.

Yeah, Victor is correct. The point of heel and toeing is to keep the car stable and ease the stress on the drivetrain when you are braking and downshifting.
It's just the current physics of LFS allow you to not do it sometimes without loosing the rear end and there is no drivetrain damage either (except clutch heat). Which is why you can often get away without it.

Thanks for the replies everyone. I especially appreciate the advice regarding keeping the car stable. Knowing I don't have to heel toes EVERY single downshift seems to have helped a lot in keeping everything under control.

I have attached a few laps I did in the FZR at Aston National using manual clutch and heel toe. They aren't particularly fast (mid 1.46's mainly) but it felt good and stable through the corners. If you could look at my lines and in particular my throttle, brake, and clutch traces and give advice it would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

Heel-toe shifting is just a way to keep the car stable while braking.

However, for new drivers, and even alot of experianced drivers do this. It's much easier to just keep the car in nutral and only gear in when you need the power back on.

I.E.
Come to the corner and start braking, then put the car in nutral.
Finnish your straight braking and put the car into the correct gear as you use the accelerater peddal to match the revs. Then let the clutch out and continue to the apex, then accelerate through the turn.
You can even shift to a low enough gear that you can use the engine braking to trail brake.

Heel-toe doesn't reduce the effect of engine braking, because that will occur as long as the throttle is closed, but it removes the negitive torque impact on the engine as the slower moving driveline engages. Which is what causes that sudden weight transfer to the front of the car.

Quote from DragonCommando :

Heel-toe doesn't reduce the effect of engine braking, because that will occur as long as the throttle is closed, but it removes the negitive torque impact on the engine as the slower moving driveline engages. Which is what causes that sudden weight transfer to the front of the car.

That weight movement forwards is of course additional maybe excessive engine braking, just sitting in neutral will give no extra engine braking, the main problem with H&T is that a non H&T setup will have a different front/rear brake bias exacly the same as a trail-braking set will be different, H&T and trailbraking are 2 totally different things also


Origamiboy I find the G25 pedals are not natural feeling enough to make H&T easy for me, how exactly did you mod yours?
Changing from a 2 pedal set to clutch and H&T is very difficult indeed, and will take alot of practise and commitment, good luck

Is it faster? I suppose it should be as it should give an advantage using aditional engine braking effectively, without locking wheels or damaging clutch/drivetrain requires H&T, and should reduce braking distance by some tiny % over locking up on down shifts or just coast braking.

Is it more realistic and immersive to use H box, manual clutch and H&T downshifts? hell yeah

SD.

I think it just takes practice to get back to (and subsequently beyond) the pace you were on with the driving aids. I've been driving three-pedalled with no aids in LFS for a couple of years now and I'm slightly faster than I am with two pedals and auto-stuff, but the first month or so was pretty painful in terms of lap times.

I also recall a 30-lap LX6 race 6 months+ ago that AndroidXP comfortably won where he was certainly using manual clutch against a field of mostly two-pedal racers, not sure if he had blip/cut switched on though.

But engine braking is caused by the vacume in the manifold slowing down the engine, not the transmission draging the engine up to speed, thats still a form of friction braking, and can be very bad.

Heel-toe takes the friction part out, but still alows you to use engine braking when you lift off the throttle, especialy because you are now in a lower gear where engine braking will have more of an effect.

You can still engine brake with the nutral shift style, but you can only do it on the turn in, after you've pulled clutch out.

Edit: engine braking CAN NOT decrease your cars braking distance, you are still limmited by your tires tractional limmits.
Good use of the threshold technique will give you much better braking distance than any amount of heel-toe downshifting engine braking bunk.

Heel & Toe is not to make anyone faster but to smoothly transition the cars power output and drivetrain with movement of said car on the road when slowing down and changing gears.

and the key to getting better is to practice actually its the only way to get better. Unless we live in the matrix and u can just upload the "ability" into your mind.

It took me a little while to get back to previous laptimes when I first started to learn to heel-n-toe. Any time I try to learn some new technique it gives me a lot of trouble to begin with because I have to actually consciously think about it. I would even crash in the middle of the straight before a turn because I would start to think about downshifting for the upcoming corner which would destroy my concentration. Once it becomes second-nature (which doesn't really take all that long) it all sorts itself out. It's probably best to just practice it over and over on a long straight or maybe the dragstrip or lot so you don't have to worry about corners or anything else and can just concentrate on the actual braking and downshifting.

Failing that, you can always drive it the same as you would a manual road-car (someone outlined this above). You probably have to brake a little earlier that way because you lose the 'multitasking' involved with HnT.

Quote from Origamiboy :

Knowing I don't have to heel toes EVERY single downshift seems to have helped a lot in keeping everything under control.

Most downshifts happen during braking - and when braking and shifting down - you use heel'n'toe. If you shift down without braking for some reason, you still blip.

I've been doing this on the road for years now and it does indeed become second nature. Somewhat annoying when driving an automatic.

Quote from DragonCommando :

However, for new drivers, and even alot of experianced drivers do this. It's much easier to just keep the car in nutral and only gear in when you need the power back on.

Since when is keeping the car in neutral recommended behaviour on a race track? That's news to me. I thought that was pretty much a no-no, since you're giving up control of the car...

When done correctly heel and toe will make you faster, i don't understand why people are saying otherwise.

Imagine this, you are braking really hard using all available grip from the tires from top speed into a hairpin. Your total braking force is a combination of brake force and engine braking effect. Since most of your time while braking is spent with the car in gear, your brake balance should be adjusted to achieve maximum braking effect at all four wheels. As soon as you dip the clutch to change gear you lose some engine braking effect from whichever wheels are driven. To compensate you could press the brake harder but whichever wheels aren't driven will then obviously lock. So while you change gear you are therefore not achieving maximum braking effect from all four wheels.

by matching the revs using h&t the gear change can be completed very quickly and you will be back to maximum braking. if no h&t is used it is still possible to achieve the same engine braking whilst slipping the clutch but to do this perfectly is so so much harder and so much more risky. Not to mention increased clutch damage from doing so. When slipping the clutch it wouldn't take much to release it a fraction to quickly causing a torque spike which the tires can't handle (due to them being at their limit of grip already) then before you know it you've locked up and are either spinning out or are going to run too deep into the corner. therefore the majority of people who slip the clutch on downshifts are leaving a bigger margin for error than someone who h&t's.

in the time it takes to complete one down change without h&t, someone with it should have been able to complete two, that is the difference. if you are able to simply dump the clutch on a down shift without blipping the throttle then you aren't using all the available grip from the tires during braking and the brake balance could be adjusted to give better braking.

yes h&t is much harder when you haven't had much practise but that is the same with everything!! Im not exactly a god at lfs but it doesnt take much thinking to figure this one out. Spend some time practising braking on the drag strip exeprimenting with setups and techniques and you'll see what i mean.

and at the arguments of 'it doesn't make you faster it makes the car more stable'..... surely better stability will allow you to push harder and therefore be faster!?

Once again, thank you all for the replies. I am sticking with it and I am slowly starting to see some positive results. It certainly makes things much more rewarding, thats for sure!

Quote from SparkyDave :

Origamiboy I find the G25 pedals are not natural feeling enough to make H&T easy for me, how exactly did you mod yours?

SD.

I added spacers to the brake and clutch, so that when braking the throttle is at the right level to heel and toe. Check out this thread for details...

http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?t=34855

Quote from DragonCommando :

Edit: engine braking CAN NOT decrease your cars braking distance, you are still limmited by your tires tractional limmits.

Hm.. I always wondered about this. I thought the reason why we use engine braking is that the brakes alone aren't strong enough to take full advantage of the maximum frictional force between the tyres and the tarmac, meaning if you don't use engine braking your braking distance is longer than it can optimally be..? Why else would anyone use engine braking? (as in fully engaging the clutch /shifting to neutral while braking, and then shifting to the correct gear when exiting the turn?)

Quote from DragonCommando :

Edit: engine braking CAN NOT decrease your cars braking distance, you are still limmited by your tires tractional limmits.
Good use of the threshold technique will give you much better braking distance than any amount of heel-toe downshifting engine braking bunk.

Engine braking will decrease your braking distance whenever you haven't got strong enough brakes to lock up, which is never in LFS but common IRL. You'll also be able to keep a far better balance of the car, putting it in neutral is wrong for so many reasons that it's not worth going into because you've clearly got some really weird misunderstandings stuck in your brain.

engine braking will also help stop your wheels locking up. if you push in the clutch and brake just a fraction too hard your wheels will lock. simple. if you brake with exactly the same force but this time without pushing the clutch, the wheels will just begin to lock which brings the engine revs right down. at this point, the engine works against the brakes as the enginge will be trying to idle and still be producing some, albiet a small amount of, power which helps to keep the wheels turning. this stops the wheels completely locking but gives you a good warning that you are at the limit of braking potential. this point of very low slip is where the most grip is obtained anyway.

this effect can be heard whilst listening to an onboard of a motorcycle without a slipper clutch. under braking (once the bike is in the right gear) you will hear the revs stutter and not really rise or fall until the bike approaches the turn in point. the same thing is quite easy to experience in a two stroke kart as well.

If you have to engine brake to get the most out of your tires traction, your brake bias is wrong. When you brake, the weight of the car rolls forward onto the front wheels, so the rear wheels can not give full traction regardless of engine braking or not, so the best option is to find a balance between front and back that alows the most braking on all four wheels.

A good way to set this is to set it twards the back to a point that the rear wheels can lock before the front ones, and then work forward untill you get a ballanced tractional force front to back. The cool thing is, the FBM can do this on track, so no garage trips over and over.

Also, putting the car in nutral is not giving up controll of the car, since you still only have to select the right gear and take your foot off of the brake and place it on the accelerator pedal.
It's just as fast, because either way, to actualy accelerate you have take your foot off the brake, get into the right gear and push the accelerator pedal.

Engine braking is a good way to manage brake heat, so doing it while using the friction brakes is pointless, it won't help you any. It should be used for faster turns where you won't need to use the brakes.

Edit @ andy:
Your engine won't do jack against locking up the brakes when the throttle is closed, and it is during braking.

I ride a motor bike, and I can stall the engine going 50, just by locking the rear wheel on a slippery surface, I don't even need to apply that much brake force.

DragonCommando I'd love to see your technique in the sequential cars now you've got the FBM in the demo, what to you do put the clutch in? Putting a car into neutral is wrong for mainy mainy reasons but a couple to take into account are firstly real cars brakes are dynamic systems that fade in racing situations so minimising usage of them is far better and you give up all control of the balance of the car with the throttle which can be essential for keeping you pointing the right way I won't bother going into the reasons why it's slower or the other mechanical affects because there's not a lot of point. If you really think it's a brilliant technique I want to be impressed with a replay of the FBM round Blackwood, I'm hopelessly slow but would be extremely suprised if you could run at my pace with your technique.

I keep the clutch in when I drive the FBM.

The whole point behind my saying it's pointless. Well thats simple.

As I said, if you brake with the normal brakes and then engine brake, your regular brakes STILL heat up the same amount, mainly your front ones because they don't get effected by engine braking at all.

Engine braking is only usefull for when you DON'T use the friction brakes, then it saves you the heat and wear, where as it would require them otherwhise

Edit: whats your time on BLGP1 ajp?


Edit2: This is a book writen by a pro race car driver:

http://books.google.com/books? ... 888lMiv8niDYeK_o#PPA20,M1

On page 20 he explaines exacly what I was saying. He also explainse Heel-toe downshifting for anyone who wants to know, it's on page 21.

Edit3: I should also point out that I have combined pedals, so I can't heel-toe. That I have to do on a real car to test.
Also, to conferm the reason for nutral shifting, it actualy reduces the time it takes to shift, because all you have to do is switch gears, or find a gear if you need to do an escape.

Quote from geeman1 :

With engine braking you CAN brake more than with just the brakes. Engine braking can not lock up the tyres. So if you are braking right on the limit of the tyres with the brakes you can add even more braking by using the engine, but if you would add more braking force to the brakes the tyres would lock up.

Right?

Thats a load of bull dude, if the tires can't handel anymore braking, they can't handel anymore tractional stress, meaning that no type of braking is going to do anything.

I think you should look at the physics of it first, before posting something that is physicaly unlogical.

Quote from geeman1 :

With engine braking you CAN brake more than with just the brakes. Engine braking can not lock up the tyres. So if you are braking right on the limit of the tyres with the brakes you can add even more braking by using the engine, but if you would add more braking force to the brakes the tyres would lock up.

Right?

No, not true... How would tires be able to get more traction all of a sudden?

Quote from DragonCommando :

As I said, if you brake with the normal brakes and then engine brake, your regular brakes STILL heat up the same amount, mainly your front ones because they don't get effected by engine braking at all.

My cat could understand this so I've not given up all hope of being able to explain it to you. Let me break it down step by step for you:

To slow a car down in the same distance requires the same resistive force.

If we then assume that in neutral the resistive force is made up of the rolling resistance of the car, the brakes and the aerodynamic drag.

For the sake of simplicity and common sense we assume the rolling resistance and aerodynamic drag will not change with engine braking.

If part of that force is instead now provided by the engine less of it has to come from the brakes.

If the brakes have to generate less force they don't have to produce as much friction.

Heat is a side product of friction.

Therefore less heat is produced.

Quote :

Edit: whats your time on BLGP1 ajp?

Seeing as you take a conventional technique on the FBM lets try a powerful RWD car with an H pattern gearbox where engine braking and throttle balancing is essential to be quick and consistent, lets see FZR, FZ50, LX6, RAC, oh wait you're a demo a racer and can't race the cars that need it most

Quote from bbman :

No, not true... How would tires be able to get more traction all of a sudden?

Most brakes IRL are not able to lock a car up at very high speed, currently in LFS we have brakes that are always stronger than the amount needed to lock up and no issues with keeping them cool.

Quote from ajp71 :

My cat could understand this so I've not given up all hope of being able to explain it to you. Let me break it down step by step for you:

To slow a car down in the same distance requires the same resistive force.

If we then assume that in neutral the resistive force is made up of the rolling resistance of the car, the brakes and the aerodynamic drag.

For the sake of simplicity and common sense we assume the rolling resistance and aerodynamic drag will not change with engine braking.

If part of that force is instead now provided by the engine less of it has to come from the brakes.

If the brakes have to generate less force they don't have to produce as much friction.

Heat is a side product of friction.

Therefore less heat is produced.



Seeing as you take a conventional technique on the FBM lets try a powerful RWD car with an H pattern gearbox where engine braking and throttle balancing is essential to be quick and consistent, lets see FZR, FZ50, LX6, RAC, oh wait you're a demo a racer and can't race the cars that need it most



Most brakes IRL are not able to lock a car up at very high speed, currently in LFS we have brakes that are always stronger than the amount needed to lock up and no issues with keeping them cool.

I can see you are getting a little bit condensending about this, so I'll put it simple. MY DAD USED TO RACE CARS.

Throwing the demo thing out there doesn't help your case at all.

Also, my dads Express 3200 can lock all four wheels at 140 km/h if you pop the ABS fuse out. If your brakes can't lock, you have a problem, or you haven't removed the ABS fuse.

On top of that, if you read the damn link 4 posts back, you'd realize that even a pro race car drivers says its wrong to us the engine to slow down, because it can upset the car even more. Thats why Drifters do it, to throw the car out.
Now as for doing it in the FZR, I'm almost positive its not realisticaly setup, since I can't drive it, I can't see your setup.

Heel-toe isn't for engine braking, its to prevent the shock created by the engine suddenly being spun up.

I know this for a fact, since on long rides I use engine braking on my motorbike to save my drum brakes from fading from heat. But I still use them if it requires changing down more than one gear, and I don't blip the throttle I pad it.

Throttle pading is basicaly a sustained blip, so I maintain the engine speed to prevent engine braking.
Infact, engine braking on loose surfaces is as bad as just chucking it into gear. Infact, my bike has such a strong engine brake effect, that even on pavement I can do the bike equivilent of heel-toe, match it perfectly and still when I let go of the throttle the rear breakes loose sometimes.

Engine braking puts more brake force to the rear wheels, so it's like setting the brake bias more to the rear. THAT is what causes the car to spin, if you have to much brake force to the rear the wheels will lock, and the only way to control engine braking is by pading the throttle to varying amounts.