Sportshift 2 - Shame you can't heel and toe...

[notax]

As you may have seen on another post, I have just bought a stunning 1 year old Vantage S roadster which I collect on Saturday . The car has the revised sportshift and my only disappointment on the test drive was that you can't heel and toe. On my F355 GTS F1 (which is now for sale) heel and toeing helps smooth the change and has the benefit of sounding brilliant with the insanely loud Capristo exhaust as you can blip the throttle manually with each gearshift. It seems on the Aston system that the throttle is disabled when you pull on the paddle, denying me some aural pleasure! Is there any way around this? With the sport button pressed the car sounds amazing and it would be nice to be able to play some tunes with it...

[Neil1300R]

When I test drove one and hammered down the gears it blipped the throttle! You need to try harder

[Cockernee]

That must be an ASM2 thing then as on my old 4.3 you could flare the revs with heel & toe. As you say, it made for an even smoother downshift.

[notax]

Neil1300R said:

When I test drove one and hammered down the gears it blipped the throttle! You need to try harder

If it blips the throttle it is very subtle, I'd rather have control and blip it noisily myself

[notax]

Cockernee said:

That must be an ASM2 thing then as on my old 4.3 you could flare the revs with heel & toe. As you say, it made for an even smoother downshift.

There is one advantage to ASM1 then!

[mikey k]

notax said:

Neil1300R said:

When I test drove one and hammered down the gears it blipped the throttle! You need to try harder

If it blips the throttle it is very subtle, I'd rather have control and blip it noisily myself

Not on mine it isn't
You do needed to be taking a fair bit of speed off to get max rev matching
Pulling fuse 15 and having the Sport button in also helps A LOT

[yeti]

News to me that you can heel & toe a robotic manual... Very interesting, had never considered it. Does the engine as standard rev quickly enough?

Are the pedals close enough together?

Does anyone left foot brake a Sportshift car..?

[KarlFranz]

I have no idea what you guys are talking about. Heel and toe is strictly a maneuver for matching revs on downshifts of a manual gearbox car. The term comes from the fact that since there are 3 pedal, but only two feet, the right foot needs to do dual duty on the brake and throttle. If you only have 2 pedals, there really is no need for heel and toe. First, you could do left-foot braking to blip the throttle. But second, the TCU on all automated manual gearboxes is designed to blip the throttle for you on downshifts. Trying to do a blip on a SS gearbox during downshifts confuses the software as it is getting pedal input to increase the throttle opening while it is simultaneously attempting to do the same thing. Doing this on an upshift makes absolutely no sense since you want revs to go down, not up, when going into a higher gear. Could this practice by some of you be an additional source for the premature clutch wear we see on some of the SS cars out there?

[notax]

You don't do it when changing up, but I do heel and toe my F1 Ferrari (automated manual the same style as the Aston system) on downshifts. It actually smooths the changes and sounds brilliant as an added bonus. As there are only two pedals you could use left foot braking (which I occasionally use when rally driving) but in both the Aston on the test drive and my F355 it is easier to brake with the right foot as usual and blip the throttle on down changes with the the side of the same foot. 'Heel and toe' is a bit of a misnomer. Whilst it works in the Ferrari the throttle appears to be disconnected by pulling the paddles in the Vantage S - shame! Would have no effect on clutch if done properly as you blip the throttle when the clutch is disengaged between shifts.

[KarlFranz]

The whole purpose of "blipping the throttle" is to over-rev the engine while the clutch pedal is down in the hopes that, as it spins down again, you can time the clutch engagement at the precise point at which the engine revs match the input shaft revs.

The over-revving sound which appears so cool to the senses is a necessary by-product of how slow it is for a human to shift. In an automated manual, not only can the computer shift much quicker than a human, but it also knows exactly just how much throttle opening it needs to achieve the perfect rev match based on vehicle speed, deceleration rate, gear ratios, and other factors. If you send input from the pedal to give more throttle opening at the same time that the computer is attempting this, then the throttle plates would open more than necessary and, at the point of clutch engagement, the engine would be spinning too fast and the clutch would slip. This can sometimes be perceived as smoother downshifts, but really, it is wearing down the clutch's friction surface faster.

Newer automated manuals shift even faster than those found one first generation ones like the F1 unit on the F355. In these systems, the TCU temporarily disconnects input from the throttle pedal, to prevent it from affecting the engine speed it is trying to set during the very brief time that the clutch is disengaged.

You can still get the sound of the revs climbing very high on down-shifts if you are scrubbing a lot of speed as you are down-shifting, because the difference in vehicle speed means that the computer has to open the throttle much more in order to create a perfect (and less jerky) rev-match.

One last thing to consider is that newer automated manuals have more gearsSSII has 7 forward gears. This means that the gear ratios are closer together and the differences in RPM between adjacent gears is less. This translates into less of a rev-climb during down-shifts if all other factors are the same.

[mikey k]

notax said:

You don't do it when changing up, but I do heel and toe my F1 Ferrari (automated manual the same style as the Aston system) on downshifts. It actually smooths the changes and sounds brilliant as an added bonus. As there are only two pedals you could use left foot braking (which I occasionally use when rally driving) but in both the Aston on the test drive and my F355 it is easier to brake with the right foot as usual and blip the throttle on down changes with the the side of the same foot. 'Heel and toe' is a bit of a misnomer. Whilst it works in the Ferrari the throttle appears to be disconnected by pulling the paddles in the Vantage S - shame! Would have no effect on clutch if done properly as you blip the throttle when the clutch is disengaged between shifts.

As Karl says you aren't going to be able to do it quickly enough or indeed need to do it with ASM2
My S does it more with the sport button in

[yeti]

mikey k said:

My S does it more with the sport button in

Exactly. So the car does it, not the driver That's why (going slightly off topic) I will always have a 3 pedal manual if possible. Then I know it's me that's got it right

[mikey k]

yeti said:

Exactly. So the car does it, not the driver That's why (going slightly off topic) I will always have a 3 pedal manual if possible. Then I know it's me that's got it right

I wouldn't expect anything different

[yeti]

mikey k said:

yeti said:

Exactly. So the car does it, not the driver That's why (going slightly off topic) I will always have a 3 pedal manual if possible. Then I know it's me that's got it right

I wouldn't expect anything different

Indeed. I have become all to predictable in my frail dotage