Driving a manual

[Waverly]

@Boyo Jim

No gas pedal at first. He should be able to start moving from a dead stop just by letting out the clutch with the car idling. When he can do that, he can start adding gas to speed up the process.

Not on my car. This doesn’t seem like a terribly good idea.

[Harmonix]

@Waverly

Not on my car. This doesn’t seem like a terribly good idea.

i’ve done it in an old corolla with less then 100 hp and a prelude with a stage 2 clutch. I’m pretty sure it can be done in any car.

[Nava]

@TheLoadedDog

Three things…

1. Third gear is your friend!
In a modern manual car, the box is relatively forgiving of poor gear selection. If your b/f gets flustered and forgets what gear he’s in, have him simply knock it into neutral, let go, then jam it straight up. It’ll be in third, a truly wonderful gear. You can be in third at 15mph and you’ll keep moving. The car will protest, but you’ll get going (slowly), and you won’t be embarrassingly stalled in the middle of a bust street. Similarly, if you get it into third at 60, you won’t cook the engine or crash, so long as you don’t stay there. Apart from just taking off at the lights, or speeding along a desert highway, third will cover most driving - at a pinch.

2. Practice ALONE! Any halfway smart person can drive a manual, but a really bad thing is to have somebody in the passenger seat when you’re trying to learn the friction point. Even worse is if that person is the owner of the car. Kangaroo the car in private!

**3.**If in doubt, over-rev. Spinning the wheels a bit is less embarrassing than stalling. And a wheel-spin is something a newbie can recover from without getting flustered, unlike stalling. If you screwed up the take-off the first time, how are you going to manage now that you KNOW the people behind you are getting impatient. Stick it on 3000rpm if you have to, and slowly clutch out.

My car’s “longest” gear is 4th, it’s a Yaris Terra. Hereabouts we call a “short” gear one that’s useful at a narrow range of speeds; a “long” one is useful at a wide range.

I haven’t seen this mentioned but haven’t read everything either:
Practice the gearbox on a sitting car. Car stopped, clutch pressed, just shift the gearstick around: 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 4th, 3rd, 2nd, 1st, reverse. Reverse can be bitchy, in many cars you have to lift a bit or press a bit to get it in - a bit, don’t do like a friend of mine did and pull the knob off, we’re still pulling his leg about it 20 years later. Lift foot occasionally to prevent cramping - remember that you can only lift the foot when you’re not trying to move the stick. Do whole sequences, then do “change one, lift, change one, lift…” - it feels dumb but helps learning to synch foot and hand. First few times do it looking at where the knob goes; then move to doing it without doing at it directly (to learn how to tell what gear he’s in by touch and by what little he sees or doesn’t see - I don’t see the Yaris’ knob in 5th, barely in 3rd, see it clearly in 1st). After he’s able to do the sequence without looking, he can move to skipping (from 2nd to 4th for example), if he wants to. All of this without moving the car.

Here in Spain the normal thing is manual; whenever I’m in the US and get an automatic I really miss that third pedal - but I can see why it would be harder to move from automatic to manual than the other way round.

[Cat_Whisperer]

@Nava

<snip> - it feels dumb but helps learning to synch foot and hand.<snip>Here in Spain the normal thing is manual; whenever I’m in the US and get an automatic I really miss that third pedal - but I can see why it would be harder to move from automatic to manual than the other way round.

Then, once you get used to it and you have to drive an automatic, you have your right hand and left foot waving around uselessly at times during your drive. (Although the left foot can be used for accidently stomping on the brake pedal, if you’re truly gifted.)

[gfloyd]

I have issues when I drive an automatic, including one memerable time I kept trying to bump the “clutch” ie the brake, and get out of a parallel parking space. It took me longer than I want to admit to realize why this wasn’t working.

I’ve given up any hope of anyone ever being able to get my car into reverse without a least two tries. It has this horride safety on it that makes it near impossible. I can only do it on the first try about one in three times. My father insists it’s so you don’t accidentallly shift into reverse when aiming for fourth. I argue this is almost impossible as is. Ah well…

[Dr.Woo]

@Johnny L.A.

I can’t speak for the OP, but I’d bet money that it’s a synchro box. I was reading a 1962 issue of Car & Driver and basically the only bad thing they had to say about the new MGB is that it lacked synchro in first. MGBs didn’t get synchro until about five years later, but it seems from the context that all-synchro boxes were desired if not expected over 40 years ago.

My MGB (still in restoration, but I expect work to resume any day now) is a '66. My Triumph Herald is a '63. (It didn’t have synchro in first, and it’s not working between 3rd and 2nd.) I don’t personally know anyone who’d be able to drive them (except for me of course).

I could! I learned to drive on a '56 Volkswagen bug, and believe me, they had no synchro in first (or a gas gauge, for that matter). It was a bit challenging to learn, especially since my instructor (my boyfriend) chose an orange orchard as the venue for my first few lessons.

That '66 MGB is a great car - I have some fun memories of zooming up PCH in one of them many years ago.

[Red_Stilettos]

@Cicero

Double clutching- it was always called double declutching in this neck of the woods. (If we are talking of the same thing- no synchromesh). It was horrible.

OK, I know how to drive a stick and I have a basic understanding of how it all works. But, what is double-clutching (or double-declutching)?

[Mr2001]

@Red Stilettos

OK, I know how to drive a stick and I have a basic understanding of how it all works. But, what is double-clutching (or double-declutching)?

It’s a way to manually match engine speeds when shifting to another gear. You shift into neutral (using the clutch one time), release the clutch, raise or lower the engine RPM to the correct speed for the desired gear, then shift into gear (using the clutch a second time).

[kilgoretrout]

I used to think I would never learn how to drive stick, but I always wanted sportscars with manual transmissions, so I eventually bought one and drove it to work(40 miles away) by myself. Along the way I realized that my problem was that I always just dumped the clutch when I was trying to get rolling instead of easing it out. Now when I teach my kids or friends, I tell them to either ease off the clutch slowly with no gas as posted by others, or to give the engine about 1500-2000 rpms and use the clutch to control the takeoff speed.

[Johnny_L.A]

@Dr. Woo

That '66 MGB is a great car - I have some fun memories of zooming up PCH in one of them many years ago.

May as well post an update here.

The guys who were supposed to be working on my car, weren’t. I moved it to a yard to get it out of the shop. Found a guy who restores British and Italian cars. My car is being moved to his shop Tuesday. I’ll ferry the parts from the first shop (a hobbyist’s machine shop) to the new one over a couple of days. The new guy says he can have it done (less upholstery, which is being done by someone else) in maybe two months.