What's everyone's thoughts on downshifting? Do you downshift through the gears when coming to a stop or turn, or do you brake until you shift into the next gear needed?
I don't downshift when coming to a stop unless I actually need it for engine braking, i.e., snow/ice. When coming to a stop at a light, I always let the car roll to as slow as is possible in whatever gear I'm in without the engine starting to lug, then clutch to neutral. I always go to neutral and leave it there when waiting for the light because I believe it saves wear on the throwout bearing. If I can see the light for cross traffic, I put it in first when their light is yellow so I can be ready to go. If I can't see it, I just take my best guess at when I think it will change.
By the way, this is why public works installing devices on traffic lights intended to prevent you from being able to see what the cross-traffic light is showing is a pet peeve of mine.
If I'm coming up to a stop sign, I always wait until I'm stopped to go to first. Several reasons for this. First, I learned to drive in cars with no synchro on first gear, so unless you wanted to trash first gear and hear a lot of noise, you had to. Second, for cars WITH synchro on first, I like to be as easy on the synchro as possible, so that means shifting when stopped. Third, in every manual I've ever driven, first gear synchro is not as strong as the synchro for other gears, so they can still crunch if you try to shift to first when going too fast and I don't want to feel or hear it or be hard on the car.
For turns, it just depends on how much I need to slow for the turn and how I am driving (performance-fun/normal). If I only need to slow a little and not trying to wring performance out of the car, I will leave it in the same gear and just ease out of the turn, lugging as little as necessary. If I can't leave it in high gear, I will just wing it and pick the best gear for the engine/road speed when coming out of the corner without slipping the clutch and just let the synchro do it's thing.
However, if I'm looking for performance, I will heel/toe and rev match the down shift (or use the electronic rev-matching feature on the fancy new car) so I can be ready to pull as hard as I need to in the lower gear coming out of the turn.
Just a note on saving the clutch as much as possible: When I am accelerating from a stop, I try to release the clutch pedal completely while using the minimum amount of throttle necessary to get the car rolling. In some cases (like starting off going down hill) that means NO throttle at all. I let the car start rolling, by gravity, THEN release the clutch quickly, with no slipping whatsoever. Starting off in any other condition is just whatever variation of that technique I can do with as little clutch slippage as possible.
Going up through the gears is just a continuation of that: accelerate, clutch, let revs match road speed for next gear, then shift/let clucth out completely with NO slippage. This takes practice to do smoothly, but will make your clutch last a long time.
