Tips for driving with non-synchronized gears?

Just passed my driving test yesterday (yay), so my father let me drive his 2008 Fiesta. He warned me beforehand that the first and reverse gear are not synchronized, so I probably have to clutch twice (shift from first to neutral to reverse instead of shifting from first to reverse directly), but that didn’t seem to do the job for me. The reverse gear still was very hard to shift into and also happened to came out of gear more than once. Does anybody have experience with non (or badly) synchronized gearboxes and can tell me if there’s some kind of trick I have to know?

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Comments

VOZZ

You need to do what your dad said, wait for the revs to drop and then shift.

06/03/2016 - 06:24 |
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Anonymous

It’s quite common that reverse and 1st are not synchronised. In most cases you go there from neutral, or at least idle revs. My car has that as well, never was a problem for me. But i’m also told i drive like an old man…
Reverse is always depending on the transmission. My old car, it went butter smooth 9 out of 10 times, in my current car, it’s the other way around.

06/03/2016 - 07:49 |
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Max Schröder

My ‘99 Corsa doesn’t have synchro on the first and reverse gear either.
I don’t know if there’s some special “rule”, but I only ever shift into first when I’m going really slow (below 10kph) and simply don’t shift into reverse when I’m at a standstill.
Never grinded either of them.

06/03/2016 - 12:03 |
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Although, that the “wheel” of the first gear was very “smooth” when I got the car, and that I removed a good handful of metal dust from the gearbox could show that the previous owner didn’t know how to operate it quite so well.

06/03/2016 - 12:04 |
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Black Phillip

Just gotta wait until the transmission stops spinning.

I thought you meant like a true unsynchronized transmission like in a Pete.

06/03/2016 - 16:05 |
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