Post has done well on opening up a range of views.
Thanks for all the feedback -- you telling me its both good and unharmful yet bad and damaging. LOL
No, I do think its promoted some interesting thoughts and feedback.
In the context of my initial post, I am not doing this whilst flying, as I'm no racing driver, I like my bit of speed now and then - and the car is nicely up for it -- but where I've started to use the engine braking (or is now engine breaking !!) is on known junctions/lights when I'm commuting that same stretch of road I always go to work along. Basically I'm slowing down a whole bunch earlier, being a bit lazy and deccelerating to the lights. No boy racer style in this at all.
Now if you want to talk about proper down shifting, lets talk about my ZX6 Ninja motorbike which comes with a slipper clutch as standard. Means I can bash the thing down through the box, and the clutch automatically slips to prevent the rear wheel locking under the immense engine/gearbox braking whilst the backend is further lightened by huge amounts of front brake !!!! Now thats a clutch designed for down-shifting fun.
So there's my context of it all !!
Sounds to me like what I am doing in the car is really going to cause minimal wear/problems. But if I start to do this in anger, well expect some accelerated wear rates on certain drivetrain components.
MARK
