what's going on guys welcome back to the channel you know what guys some of your questions lead to some of my favorite videos to make and this is no exception i recently had somebody actually two people in a really short period of time between the two but the question was how do you use the paddle shifters to drive spiritedly i think there's a lot of guys and gals out there that would love to use the paddle shifters but just don't because they're not comfortable doing it and i think the paddle shifters are like one of the most enjoyable parts of this car if you're a non-sport q50 you should definitely do the installation because it's super easy and it doesn't cost all that much i use the paddle shifters every day all day and enjoy it thoroughly and i think like i said that some just don't use them that much because they just aren't really sure how to do it i think those of us that have driven manual transmission cars in the past take that a little bit for granted whereas those of us that have not experienced driving a stick shift car uh just like i said may not know exactly how to use these so today i'm just gonna go quickly through uh how you would uh drive the vehicle with uh the the manual paddle shifters just in regular driving situations but then also kind of go over real quick how you or how i like to use the paddle shifters in more of a spirited driving situation so there's just a couple of things to keep in mind when you're in manual mode using the paddle shifters or using the stick number one is don't take your foot off the throttle when you're up shifting it's much different in a manual transmission car obviously when you take your foot off the throttle to press depress the clutch the transmissions work in different ways you have a valve body in the seven speed automatic transmission which directs hydraulic fluids under pressure and your transmission works in communication with your throttle so and it's relative to your throttle position and all of that kind of stuff so you want to keep the pressure on the system which helps your transmission shift crisply and cleanly and effectively and if you especially are in the higher rpm range and then you take your foot off the throttle when you try to upshift you're gonna hear major delays it's gonna almost sound like your transmission is slipping it just it doesn't it doesn't work as it should so keep your foot on the throttle number two is that the car will downshift automatically for you the car is going to downshift as you work down in the rpm range we'll talk more about this later on but you don't have to worry about it i do let off the throttle when i downshift the car rev matches for you also you don't have to control the throttle when you're downshifting and you'll see what i mean when we talk more about that another thing is that the car does not like half-assed shifts so if you're at wide open throttles especially don't shift at 4 000 rpm it's going to be rough just let it wind out the same is true if you're at you know half throttle or three quarter throttle don't don't let it rev up slowly to the higher rpm range and then try to shift just like i said the transmission operates uh with a valve body and hydraulic pressures hydraulic fluids under pressure so if you have if you're at wide open throttle wind it out um don't don't try to early shift it'll be rough you'll get a clunk and you'll get a jolt especially between third and fourth gear another thing to keep in mind as we talk more about the spirited driving situations is that in a spirited driving scenario whether you're in the mountains or you know twisty roads uh you're probably gonna be hanging out in second and third gear remember the top of second gear is 60 mile an hour so if you're at the top of third gear you're at 80 90 mile an hour and the chances that you get that fast in the mountains unless you're in the canyons of california on those long windy roads you're probably not going to reach that point so you're going to be in second or third gear so you're not going to be going through all the gears or back down through all the gear so there's not a lot to think about rather than other than just controlling your rpm range in those two gears one other important thing to note in this car there is a slight delay in shifting so you want to give yourself a little bit of cushion before redline i typically if i'm winding the car out i'll shift at 71 70 200 rpm and then hit the paddle and at that point it'll shift right at redline again driving this seven-speed automatic is much different than driving a manual transmission car you can rev it right to the point where you want to shift and then you take your foot off the gas and depress the clutch so it's a very quick motion but your rpm stops right when you want it to stop when you're doing a no-lift shift in the seven-speed auto your rpm is going to continue to go so it's you don't get the delay of lifting your foot off the gas so when you hit that paddle it's going to be a split second but there is going to be a delay where your rpm continues to rise and you don't want to shift right at 7 500 rpm then hit the paddle because you're going to hit rev limiter that's going to you know hinder your momentum it's going to cause a little bit of a blip in your momentum so if you're really trying to go hard at the drag strip or get a good 0 to 60 time you want to time it just right also the right paddle plus is up shift left paddle minus downshift all right so i'm going to put it in manual mode right there puts it in first gear and we're going to just drive some do regular driving to get an idea of how to use the paddle shifters just a normal everyday driving situation all right we're at a stoplight and we're just going to accelerate and again if you don't have experience driving a manual transmission car this might be a little bit of a foreign concept to you but um you know just your average regular cruise i will shift up to second gear you know at 2500 3000 rpm you don't really have to wind it up to 3 000 you can shift a lot sooner than that but you know i like to hear the car and then you can see the car will downshift automatically by itself [Music] so as i said the car automatically downshifts for you uh but if you like to you know hear a little bit of a rev match and and uh like to do the downshifting uh by yourself um this is particular comes this becomes important particularly in the spirited driving scenarios um but generally what you can do in terms of timing would be um compare your mile per hour with your rpm so if you're in fourth gear at 40 miles an hour like i am right now but i wanted to slow down or i'm coming to a stop sign and i'm gradually slowing down i would shift down to third gear at about 30 miles an hour look at the car just did it by itself um but like the same would be true from third to second i'm at 20 miles an hour i downshift a second so 20 mile an hour downshift to second gear so again we're at about 30 mile an hour in third gear but i want to slow down or i need to slow down slowly we get close to 20. i downshift a second you get the small rpm uh jump with the slight rev match and now we're back on the throttle [Music] this is just more of a leisurely cruise right so again shifting it 2800 rpm 3000 rpm something in in that range kind of you know a cruising speed 35 40 mile an hour right at 2000 rpm so actually third gear is perfect on a road like this it allows you in a kind of a straight situation allows you to wind it out a little bit but it still keeps you in a good rpm range when you take some of the curves so if i was really pushing on this on this road right now third gear would be perfect and then you come up to a turn like this uh where a downshift to second would be perfect i'm going with one hand is not gonna happen right now but um you know changing between third and second is all you're really gonna do on a road like this see i mean third gear is plenty here um this might be sort of a weird angle but it'll at least allow you to see what my hands are doing so we're heading up to some more twisty roads i'm in first gear right now so just keep that as a reference point there's about a 3 400 rpm shift again 34 3 500 rpms now we're in third gear which like i said is probably where you'd want to hang out in a scenario like this all roads will be different you'll just have to kind of get a feel for you know where you'll be at in your rpm range again you want to keep it in the power band as much as you possibly can if you're going for a spirited driving experience now this is a a relatively high trafficked road i just saw some bicyclists heading up this direction so see they're shifted at about 4 500 5000 rpm into fourth gear which i wouldn't need to do if i was really trying to keep my rpm up and racing but again you know high traffic area we're not going insane but third again i'm going to downshift here right now we're at 3 000 rpm cruising but find it out come to a corner i'm just staying in third and this is perfect [Music] tight corner downshift bicyclists here we are beautiful i don't know if you guys are familiar with cycling at all but this is george hincapie in front of me he lives up here on this in this area used to uh cycle for us postal service and lance armstrong i don't know if that sounds familiar to you though there's a look at him this is this is what sucks about this area i'm all for people cycling but jeez hurry alright we'll just head back down in this direction again starting out we're in second gear i was racing this is probably where i'd be second gear but i'm not so we're just having a nice little spirit to drive on the twisty roads third gear is perfect unless you come to a real tight corner and you want to downshift and accelerate out but third keeps me right at that 3000 rpm range which is just fine right here you can downshift a second if you wanted to but third still plenty peppy cars happy in this range and don't forget the vqs torque comes in right around 3000 3500 maybe 4000 rpm that's what's going to help you pull out of those tight corners not so much the high rpm horsepower lots of traffic so you can't be stupid out here so that road i could that part i could have hit fourth on but we have to downshift to third probably second right here and coming to a stop sign this is sort of an awkward video to make because there's no real good spot to put the camera unless you had somebody else filming for you which is maybe what i have to do in a follow-up video but i hope this is helpful another thing i'd want to say is don't go crazy shifting all over the place as you can tell on that road i was saying staying in third gear for a vast majority of the time some of the real tight corners downshifting in the second sometimes on a longer straightaway i'd have enough room to rev it out and shift into fourth but you're not constantly shifting that's way too much strain on your transmission i've i've seen videos of it of other people in the mountains in a q 50 in particular shifting just constantly not even using the paddle shifter using the stick shift and constantly switching gears and what happened eventually is transmission went out it's just too much work when it's not necessary just shift when you absolutely have to so in third gear i let it wind up a little bit more 3200 rpm there the car sounds good so i could probably shift at 2000 rpm that's probably what your your transmission does on its own uh just an under light load probably better for fuel mileage as well i have no idea where i am by the way how george really messed me up cyclists [Music] coming to a stop down to third gear 30 down the second gear at 22 you can hear the rev match and then when you come to a stop the car will shift to first for you don't downshift to first gear you don't ever need a downshift reverse gear taking off from stoplight i hope everyone had a great thanksgiving appreciate you guys following along if there's any interest at all in me doing a more in-depth video on how to use paddle shifter specifically in more spirited driving situations please let me know in the comments down below i'll definitely put one together with an extra set of hands so we can get a little more detail in terms of when and how and all of those types of things um i'm glad to do it so thank you guys very much for following along and look forward to seeing you in the next video you