Skipping gears

[Wads]

A question for Toolpants or other technical boffins out there...... theres a question over on Boxanet at the moment about whether its good or bad to skip gears going up the box in a manual eg going from 2nd to 5th or 3rd to 6th.

The general opinion seems to be that it doesn't matter....... however I have previously heard various things to suggest that skipping gears can place undue demands and premature wear on the synchromesh?

As I ain't no technical whizz I don't know for sure but its something about the difference in rotational speed between gears....... the synchro helps blend the rotational speeds of the various parts of the gearbox when you change gear....... changing sequentially up the box means that there is as small a difference in rotational speeds between each gear so the synchro doesn't have to do much work when swapping to the next cog. However if you skip gears there is a bigger difference in rotational speeds so the synchro has to work much harder....... eg. swapping from 2nd to 6th would involved a big change.

Is this total rubbish or can anyone offer the proper technical background to this?

P.S. I'm only interested in the impact (or not) of skipping gears going up the box.....

[Tool Pants]

I skip gears shifting up and down once in a while over the 7 years I have had had the Box. No problem. I also have done this in other cars I have owned.

[Wads]

I skip gears shifting up and down once in a while over the 7 years I have had had the Box. No problem. I also have done this in other cars I have owned.

So do I sometimes but does that mean you don't think theres any truth in the idea that skipping will make the synchros work harder? It does seem to make sense after reading up on how they work.

There are various technical bullitins from Honda on this saying that it shouldn't be done due to wear on the synchros but that may be specific to Honda gearboxes..... S2000, NSX and Prelude seem to be affected.