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Re: Male Chauvinism Of Former Times

Cross-posted to 5 groups.

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On 27/05/2022 04:55 pm, NY wrote:
> "Java Jive" <java@evij.com.invalid> wrote in message 
> news:t6qiki$s3j$1@dont-email.me...
>> [Lest anyone mistakenly think I subscribe to this view, my mother was 
>> a WAAF driving instructor during WW2, and was the best driver in the 
>> family. I have made for our private use a map of the places we have 
>> photos of taken during  Scottish holidays, the southernmost ones are 
>> Edinburgh and Dalry, the northernmost Gruinard Bay, featuring almost 
>> everywhere in between, though not the east coast, and of course we 
>> usually drove up from southern England to get there.  Only now does it 
>> strike me how many hundreds of miles Ma, and later my stepfather, must 
>> have driven on these family holidays.]
> 
> And she'll have been taught (and taught others) to drive vehicles with 
> no synchromesh, and therefore to perform double-declutching. Anyone who 
> can master that skill deserves much kudos. Nowadays it is impossible to 
> learn true DDC to non-synchromesh standards because (virtually) all cars 
> on the road today have synchromesh on all gears so you have no way of 
> knowing whether or not you have matched the engine and gearbox speeds 
> sufficiently accurately for the gear to engage. No matter what you do, 
> you can always *engage* any gear - you could engage first at 70, as long 
> as you don't let the clutch up!!!!! Good drivers try to match the speeds 
> when bringing up the clutch *after* the gear had successfully engaged, 
> so both plates are going at the same speed, but that's a very different 
> thing. Clutchless gearchanges can be mastered, but in that case you have 
> instant feedback: until you reach the matching speed, the gear will not 
> engage; once you reach the right speed it slips in. In DDC, you are 
> doing it offline: you have to hope that the engine speed is correct, 
> then disengage the engine (so you've no way of making minor tweaks), and 
> if it doesn't work you have to let the clutch up, tweak the engine 
> speed, declutch and try again: effectively you've got a system with a 
> delay in its feedback loop.
> 
> I did once have the misfortune to be a passenger in a car driven by 
> someone who had been driving for probably 20 years (she was not a new 
> driver) and she had the habit of coming right off the power, engaging 
> the new gear, letting the clutch up on an idling engine (with one hell 
> of a lurch!) and then applying power. I'd only been driving a few years 
> but I'd been taught the rudiments of rev-matching by my instructor (ex 
> police Class 1 instructor) who was keen to show newly-passed drivers how 
> to do it "properly". Should I say anything? After she apologised after a 
> particularly bad lurch, I very tactfully suggested that maybe there was 
> another way (I avoided the word "better"!) which might reduce the 
> lurches. She thought it was her car and asked me to drive to see. 
> Allowing for a couple of minutes to get used to a strange car's clutch 
> bite point and graunchy gear-selection, I drove it "differently" and she 
> was mystified. Without saying "this is how you should do it", I 
> described what I did, and there was a wonderful moment of realisation 
> and frustration "Ah, I didn't know you could do that". Without a 
> rev-counter, it's a bit more difficult to judge the correct engine speed 
> (with my present car I know that each change of gear is roughly an 
> increase/decrease of 500 rpm) but you can still do it my engine note - 
> at the very least keep the engine revs constant, and ideally increase 
> when changing down or decrease when changing up... anything but let the 
> engine revs fall to idling and let the clutch up on a "dead" engine.
> 
> There was an age and seniority issue (she was my manager) which is why I 
> was bending over backwards to be tactful and to avoid her feeling silly. 
> Next time I rode with her, she was fine, and she joked that she'd been 
> practicing. So it wasn't "typical woman driver" - it was just that she 
> had been taught very badly and had never experimented with doing things 
> differently to what she'd been taught. She was a people manager rather 
> than an engineer - maybe my scientific/engineering background made me 
> more likely to experiment "what if".

The cars I learned in (and tended to own for the first few years after 
passing my test) invariably didn't have synchromesh on 1st gear and 
often, it was badly-worn on 2nd, meaning that double-declutching was a 
necessary skill if you needed to change down that low whilst on the move.

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Thread

Male Chauvinism Of Former Times (was: TOT: Public Version of Family Archive) Java Jive <java@evij.com.invalid> - 2022-05-27 14:10 +0100
  Re: Male Chauvinism Of Former Times (was: TOT: Public Version of Family Archive) Davey <davey@example.invalid> - 2022-05-27 15:24 +0100
  Re: Male Chauvinism Of Former Times (was: TOT: Public Version of Family Archive) "NY" <me@privacy.invalid> - 2022-05-27 16:55 +0100
    Re: Male Chauvinism Of Former Times (was: TOT: Public Version of Family Archive) Folderol <general@musically.me.uk> - 2022-05-27 18:23 +0100
    Re: Male Chauvinism Of Former Times (was: TOT: Public Version of Family Archive) jjb <invalid@invalid.nl> - 2022-05-27 19:32 +0200
      Re: Male Chauvinism Of Former Times (was: TOT: Public Version of Family Archive) Steven <frelwizzen@gmail.com> - 2022-05-27 22:52 -0700
    Re: Male Chauvinism Of Former Times (was: TOT: Public Version of Family Archive) MB <MB@nospam.net> - 2022-05-27 18:43 +0100
      Re: Male Chauvinism Of Former Times Java Jive <java@evij.com.invalid> - 2022-05-27 22:53 +0100
        Re: Male Chauvinism Of Former Times Ian Jackson <ianREMOVETHISjackson@g3ohx.co.uk> - 2022-05-28 13:53 +0100
          Re: Male Chauvinism Of Former Times williamwright <wrightsaerials@f2s.com> - 2022-05-28 14:17 +0100
            Re: Male Chauvinism Of Former Times bad sector <forgetski@postit_INVALID_.gov> - 2022-05-28 10:00 -0400
    Re: Male Chauvinism Of Former Times JNugent <jennings&co@fastmail.fm> - 2022-05-28 15:24 +0100
  Re: Male Chauvinism Of Former Times (was: TOT: Public Version of Family Archive) bad sector <forgetski@postit_INVALID_.gov> - 2022-05-28 10:51 -0400
    Re: Male Chauvinism Of Former Times (was: TOT: Public Version of Family Archive) Stefen <frelwizzen@gmail.com> - 2022-05-28 16:28 -0700

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