atkinsson

I got a street strip camed and some other nice things in a 01 SSa 6 speed so i was gunna try a difrent road with taking my ss to a local track for some rr. Most of those guys that go here r porchas and some vetts and a couple mustangs so was thinking of trying it out looks like a blast. gunna just update my rotors fluids and pads but i couldent help but ask. Is it me or heel and toe on a 4th get is rather hard the space ur peadle give u is practicly none and by the time u aply as much break needed for using ur heel is to much. any solotion or do i just have to get use to doing it..

mitchntx

iTrader: (14)

H/T is a learned trait ... it's just not a natural contortion of your ankle in a seated position. So, yes, you will have to get used to it.

There are numerous ways to achieve the end means, though.

Heel on the brake pedal and toes on the upper part of the gas pedal. And then you "piont" your toes and it blips the throttle.

Ball of your fott, just below the big toe and the outer part of your foot next to your little toe on the throttle. You "roll" your ankle onto the gas pedal.

I've even seen an ocasional student try and have theball of their foot on the brake pedal, and try and "hit" the gas pedal with their heel.

The second method works best for me.

But in a 4th gen, it requires a little pedal modification.

http://www.lawmotorsports.net/pedal.jpg

I bought this thing years and years ago. Using six #6 wood screws, it attaches to the stock gas pedal.

Since then, I picked up a $0.99 Wal-Mart cutting board made of nylon and about 1/4" thick. I draw out the shape I want, use a hack saw to cut it out and attach it. Seems to work well.

HTH

EchoMirage

iTrader: (3)

use the left half of your right foot on the brake, and roll your pinky toe area over to blip the gas on downshifts. dont bother with the 'heel' and 'toe' method. this works way better, especially in our cars. ive been doing it for years on the street and every time on track. practice on the street and youll be fine.

atkinsson

Thanks.guys ill keep practicing on street for now

SimRacer1

yup, just like mentioned above use the left half of ur foot for the brake and ur right half to blip the gas. Or depening on pedal layout and spacing, you may have to roll your heel over to the gas pedal and blip it while braking. But dont brake with your heel and blip with the toe, thats incorrect and for fine brake pedal modulation and feel (especially when on the limit of grip/lockup, otherwise known as threshold braking), you just cant get the feel and super fine precision from ur heel, that you can with the middle to upper part of your foot.

If you watch real racecar drivers they use the left side on the brake and right side of the foot to blip the gas. Its much easier for them though because 1. the racecar pedals are tiny 2. the pedals have almost no space between eachother 3. they are wearing super small and thin soled racing shoes. This is the best way to do it but it might be hard on our cars pedal layout, but as mentioned by others above it seems possible so give it a try.

Make sure u let the clutch out right after you blip the throttle, some people blip the throttle then dont let the clutch out until after the revs drop again or let the clutch out slowly, well that just defeats the whole purpose of blipping the throttle.

Oh and if your cruising and at low rpms when you try to do it then ull have to give the gas a bigger or longer blip cause the revs rise so much slower in low rpms, but at higher rpms where the throttle is much more responsive its alot easier/faster. Especially with most of our cars that dont rev super fast compared to other sports cars.

If you do it perfectly ull be able to pretty much pop the clutch out since the revs are matched up perfectly you should feel nothing, smooth as butter. If you feel the car jerk forward when u quickly let the clutch out that means you over revved, if you feel the car slow down even more than from your braking then that means you didnt rev it enough (or you may have initially revved it enough, but took to long to let the clutch out so by the time you let the clutch out now the revs have dropped again).

Also if you are doing mutliple downshifts, you press the clutch in and out for each gear downchange and obviosuly blip for each one.

If your braking really hard and cant down change fast enough you can skip gears (from 5th to 2nd for example) but make sure you are going slow enough for that gear and make sure you give it a freakin nice big blip to match the higer revs that the low gear will probably need. Its perfectly 10000% safe skipping gears even on downshifts, again as long as you just match the revs properly.

alright time for a break lol....

atkinsson

okay thanks alot ima see if i dont spin out into a ditch or get stoped by a cop lol okay laters guys ..

dtfastbear

I've been pushing to rename this act from Heel-Toe to Ball-Side because most folks do use the ball of their foot on the brake pedal and the right side of their foot to poke the throttle.

mitchntx

iTrader: (14)

Go to Youtube and search ... lots of techniques ...

Andy1

I don't know how you specific car's pedals are arranged, but bending the throttle pedal shaft (I assume it's steel) to place the pedal in the optimum position is not uncommon. With the brake pedal depressed, you don't want to have to roll your foot much to reach the gas pedal (both in the depressed direction and the side-to-side direction). Practice the HT method until it becomes natural.

Andy1

SouthernSon

iTrader: (1)

Heel and Toe is an old carry over term from days gone by when the clutch/brake and throttle were located in different order than today. It is really just a brake and blip by rolling the foot over on the throttle. There are companies, such as elite engineering, that make pedals to assist in better alignment of the pedals to accomplish it more easily. However, with practice, one can pretty much do any vehicle as stock. You might have to point your right foot almost horizontally toward the driver side to push brake and hit throttle with more of your heel than side of your foot but it can be done. I had to do that at Bondurant's school last year since the vette's pedals were stock. Practicing on the street is somewhat cumbersome because the speeds/rpm are so much lower and difficult to match but try it. Use a little faster approach to the exit/enter ramps before braking and it works a little better. I find the method at the track with higher rpm's to be so much more natural. You can practice at a track near you on weekends during HPDE events. You might look at promoters of such events for their schedules or try sites like trackschedule for composite listings. Keep practicing!

SimRacer1

Exactly

jtl12419

iTrader: (13)

This is an essential skill- you do need it in those end of back straight corners, and sharp corners, when you downshift. You need to get it right for road racing.

Pedal arrangement, seat position, and body mechanics are the key to having successful HT. If you have mushy brake pedals where there is a big height difference where your brake and throttle pedals are- then its fix the pedals time. Most street cars are not well set up for this at all.

Also, if you have poor throttle response-- (RPMs change VERY slowly in response to pedal input)-- this slows your gear change down.

No matter what someone tells you how to do it, you have to work it out for yourself on your car. Practice with the engine off, with different seat positions.

For me, I can only do it certain cars if the pedals work a certain way.

The only real tip I can give you is to wear racing shoes (or wrestling, or track and field shoes if you are not concerned about your feet burning in a fire) -s o that the heel and toes are at the same level.
You can "BLIP" with your toe or your heel- I personally use my heel to blip- and I downshift LATE into the corner, right before going off brake.

Have fun... enjoy sitting in the car for hours learning this

XxWICKEDSSxX

I find it very easy to HT in my 01 SS, i have tried many different methods and the easiest most comfortable to me was to brake with my big toe and rotate my foot to blip the throttle with the mid-right of my foot. My carpet has holes all over the place from the rubbing lol

Just make sure when your on the street practicing that you take your time to learn and choose where you do it wisely. theres nothing more nerve racking than when you slip off the brake, or get your feet caught in the pedals. I choose a left hand corner to practice where if i effed up i could still go straight Finding the right shoe makes a big difference too.

Big Bu Bu

iTrader: (4)

A lot depends on your pedal set up. On the track during threshold braking you can really press that brake pedal down pretty close to the floor. If you have a gas pedal that is somewhat close to the brake, you can inadvertantly press the throttle while braking. This is especially true if you like to hang the right side of your foot off the brake pedal. Sometimes just using the ball of your foot to press down still doesn't clear the gas. On the street the roll from the ball of your foot works good because your not compressing the brake that much. On the track, you may have to place your foot squarely on the pedal, squeeze down for all it's worth and then do "point your toe to the left" which will place a part of your mid-foot over the gas and then blip. Don't be afraid to experiment on which technique works out best for you.

Purple95Z28

iTrader: (6)

Bumping an old thread -

I've been working on my heel toe technique lately but I've found that I can't really do it in my Camaro. It seems like the gas pedal's position is too far towards the firewall to be reached by the right side of my right foot. Maybe under threshold braking where the brake pedal is pretty far down I could do it, but that almost never happens during street driving. If I'm just doing some spirited street driving through some twisty roads or what have you, the brake pedal does not go down far enough to reach the gas.

The side to side distance between brake/gas doesn't seem too bad (about like my Saturn 5 speed, which I can heel toe quite easily in, lol).

I've heard of some people adapting their technique specifically for the 4th gen's pedals by using their heel on the brake and sticking their toes out to the gas pedal but that's totally counter intuitive for me and I don't want to get into a bad habit that doesn't work in other cars.

I've seen some pedal sets like the Autoviation.com ones, but they seem to address only the side to side problem, not the "depth" problem. Maybe it's possible to use a nice pedal set and shim the gas pedal to bring it out towards the driver more?

Any thoughts would be appreciated

mitchntx

iTrader: (14)

You can stack them two or three deep.

But ...

You are the first I've encountered where the brake pedal is too high/throttle pedal is too low.

I have to wonder, what's been done to create this unique-ness?

SIK02SS

iTrader: (11)

I thought a lot of people with small(er) feet had this problem Mitch? Either way, it can be fixed with a few pop rivets and some aluminum

mitchntx

iTrader: (14)

That very well could be. I've just don't recall hearing of anyone complain about a "too high brake pedal" or "too low throttle".

Purple95Z28

iTrader: (6)

I'm just going to buy a set of those SRP pedals and if they don't take care of the problem, I'll figure out a way to shim it between the pedal and pedal cover with a shaped piece of nylon or something.

gatman01

iTrader: (7)

I know I'm reviving an old thread but, someone recently commented on my HT method I didn't see the need to make a new thread just to share that experience. A co worker of mine wanted to learn how to Heel/toe downshift. He said he has practiced many times and just couldn't do it. I had him sit in the backseat of my T/A and watch what I did.

He said that I don't roll my ankle when I blip the throttle. I thought it was weird because how did I blip the accelerator with out rolling my ankle. So I had him watch me as I did it again. Well he said, my knee would jerk to the right when I blip. So while braking with the left half of my right foot, jerking my knee to the right naturally put the edge of the my foot over the accelerator to blip it.

I consciously tried the HT by rolling my ankle and found that I would lift on the brake. And it didn't feel natural. So I stayed with my knee jerk method. I just find it funny that the rest of my leg compensated for the the lack of "ankle roll."