Safe Speed Forums

Just a quick question... most people I know tend to block-change on the way down through the gears, does anyone here ever block-change on the way up?

My previous car (52-plate A4 1.9 TDI 130) didn't really have the power to block-change on the way up, the current one (56-plate A4 TDI 170) was always able to go 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 6th, or even 1st, 2nd, 4th, 6th.

Since having it chipped (now 210bhp) it'll quite happily go 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 6th.

Does anyone else do this as a matter of course?

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Magistrates rule #1: "Never let justice get in the way of a conviction."

I routinely get up to my desired cruising speed in 3rd and then upchange to 5th. (I only have 5 forward gears)

I believe this is something encouraged by the IAM.

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

I sometimes skip a gear when changing up after a burst of acceleration; I’m likely to go from 2nd/3rd to 5th (my top) when matching the speed of traffic flow when joining a motorway or after an overtake.
I'm a fortunate owner of a car that has bags of torque, so I don't always need to go through all the gears.

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Views expressed are personal opinions and are not necessarily shared by the Safe Speed campaign

Of course. The instant it's possible to get into top gear, just do it to save petrol.
And refuse to change down, unless you absolutely need to! I think it's called
"hyper mileing" and you can do it in any car - from "vanity models" all the way up
to sensible, lower powered models.

I certainly don't "routinely" do it, but have occasionally done it as and when the situation has made it seem the right thing to do. (The "situation" being a combination of a whole load of factors like the car, the speed (raod and engine), the gradient, the traffic conditions...

...etc).

I have sequential gearboxes ...

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

I have an automatic

With a "tiptronic" lever that you can use to make suggestions to the gearbox, which it may or may not take you up on

My old auto was a dumb box you could trick into doing pretty much exactly what you wanted, with the shifter or the power/normal/hold switch. Now you'll get the new improved "smart" gearbox that, despite having a supposed manual control lever, frequently ignores this as it tries to second guess you all the time and thinks it knows better. why oh why?

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Fear is a weapon of mass distraction