Well maybe, if you’re 15 years old or have just started figuring out manual transmissions.
Otherwise that is stupid. Also it’s really easy to do, not exactly a feat of automotive competence.
no, 15 year olds drive automatics, but put them in neutral at stops and roll back a bit. They think people will believe their mom’s Avalon has a stick shift :rolleyes:
This is actually a really good metric. I use it myself, though I only drive for myself and my friends (and a coupe, not a limo.) I sometimes glance at the passenger in my front seat when I shift. If I see their head do a little jerk when I shift, then I frown and try to do better next time. A friend of mine (lifelong auto-tranny) noticed this the last time I drove us to lunch.
Me: shift, note a minor head-jerk, sigh
Her: “What’s wrong?”
Me: “Oh nothing. But that last shift wasn’t quite smooth enough.”
Her: “..the fuck are you talking about?”
Me: “…you wouldn’t understand. I just need to do better.”
That said, learning a manual ain’t that hard. I’d recommend to nearly everyone. It really is more fun and you have closer control with the car. I learned at 27 after having driven autos for 11 years; if the OP has driven them in the past it will come right back.
And yes, it does get drilled into your muscle memory. I go through Chicago rush-hour traffic reasonably frequently and I’m never “thinking” about the maddeningly frequent “clutch, shift, brake, clutch, shift, ad nauseum” it takes when I’m crawling through the city. And I rent cars a lot when I travel for business, nearly always auto, and it’s fairly typical for my left foot to push at the non-existent clutch or for my right hand to grab for the non-existent shifter at times when it would be called for when driving a manual.
Huh. Well, I’m 27 and the car would be purchased for a Chicago commute.
This response is relevant.
The “right” way to drive a stick involves forward motion in the absence of jolts, a madly racing engine or horrible grinding noises.
After driving a manual for a few years, I can’t tell you how many times I pushed an imaginary clutch to the floor several times when starting an automatic car the first few weeks.
I once rented the utility truck from Lowe’s to bring some plywood home. Upon returning, I went to park the truck out in front of the store where I found it, and as I slowed, my left foot automatically went to depress the clutch. Except there wasn’t any clutch. My left foot found the brake instead, and the truck SLAMMED violently to a stop, the loose metal walls on the truck bed making an unholy racket that drew every eye in the parking lot.
[sub]Oops.[/sub]
This thread was a LOT of fun to read!
Hubby taught me to drive a stick when we first got married…and we stayed married, surprise, surprise. We’ve had 15 year gaps in owning manual transmissions, and I’ve been pleasantly shocked to find that as soon as you get behind the wheel, the memories flood back and you find the old skills.
Hubby taught both of our kids (and countless others!) to drive a manual when they first started driving. The kids were skilled enough to take their behind-the-wheel tests with manual transmissions and pass 100%! The examiners were floored. That just doesn’t happen these days.
We were lucky to live next to a decommissioned AF base, and the grid of intersecting streets with no traffic was a perfect scenario for teaching a manual transmission. Hubby’s other teaching secret was to tell the student that he had an imaginary cup of water sitting on the dash, and all shifting had to be done smoothly enough so as to not spill a drop.
No manual trannies in the household today, but in a pinch, we all know how to move that car that is blocking the driveway!
~VOW
Having someone drive a car with a manual transmission for a week or two is a great way to break that person of two-foot driving in cars with automatics.
My truck is a stick shift and the minivan an automatic…I’m forever stomping on the imaginary clutch pedal and reaching for the shifter in the minivan.
I like** VOW’**s imaginary cup of water teaching device.
Excellent. For more fun, Google the phrase “car hijack foiled by manual transmission”.
QFT
My daddy taught me to “engine-brake” when slowing down. I found out the hard way that new brakes are a lot cheaper than new clutches.
Anytime you are getting conflicting advice, at least one of the people is full of it. How you tell which one(s) is the real trick of learning the “best” way. Unfortunately, I’ve never learned that trick.
I take this to mean you wore out a clutch prematurely via engine braking? If so, then you were doing it wrong, i.e. by letting the engine RPM’s fall off during the shift and then using gradual clutch engagement/slippage to bring the RPM’s back up.
The right way:
-clutch-in.
-downshift.
-use the accelerator to bring the engine RPM up to the level it would be at if the clutch were fully engaged in the new/lower gear.
-let the clutch out.
In theory, there should be zero clutch slippage/wear using this technique, and zero jostling of the vehicle. In reality, it may take some practice to be able to do this, especially since your right foot may be on the brake in addition to blipping the throttle.
:dubious:
I never do that. When engine braking, I downshift well before I need to brake. If I ever need to use the brake, I just clutch, brake while downshifting and bring the engine rpm up after releasing the brake.
Only one pedal at a time under your foot gives you the best control over your vehicle. Juggling toe pressure/heel pressure on two different pedals at the same time goes against the KISS principle.
BTW, I’ve never worn out a clutch during the almost thirty years I’ve been driving stick shifts. The first decade and a half I drove mostly old cars with a lot of mileage.
Heel toe brakeing is a legitimate technique, I don’t really find it necessary on streets to use it when engine brakeing myself.
HI, IF YOU HAVE DRIVEN A MANUAL TRANSMISSION BEFORE THE REST SHOULD BE EASY. YOU REALLY DONT FORGET HOW. THE FIRST THING TO DO IS TO SEE IF YOU CAN BORROW A MANUAL TRANSMISSION CAR TO GET THE FEEL OF USING A CLUTCH AGAIN. WHAT YOU NEED TO DO IS START THE CAR. DEPRESS THE CLUTCH PUT THE TRANSMISSION IN FIRST GEAR AND TRY TO BRING THE CLUTCH SLOWLY UP TO ENGAGE THE GEAR USING AS LITTLE GAS WITH OUT STALLING THE CAR. IF YOU FAIL AT FIRST TRY TRY AGAIN. ONCE YOU FEEL THE CLUTCH BITE BRING THE CLUTCH PETAL ALL THE WAY UP AND FEED GAS. DO NOT POP THE CLUTCH. BRING IT UP WITH YOUR FOOT. PRACTICE THAT A FEW TIMES AND YOU SHOULD HAVE NO TROUBLE AFTER THAT. IF YOU FEEL THE CAR STARTING TO BUCK DEPRESS THE CLUTCH PETAL RIGHT AWAY. THAT WILL HAPPEN IF YOUR NOT FEEDING ENOUGH GAS. VERY IMPORTANT. WHEN DRIVING A MANUAL TRANSMISSION CAR DO NOT RIDE THE CLUTCH. WHAT I MEAN BY THAT IS WHEN YOU SHIFT FROM GEAR TO GEAR DO NOT LEAVE YOUR FOOT ON THE CLUTCH PEDAL. TAKE YOUR FOOT OF THE CLUTCH PEDAL EACH TIME YOU SHIFT SO TO FULLY ENGAGE IT OTHERWISE YOU WILL CAUAE THE CLUTCH TO SLIP AND WEAR IT OUT PREMATURELY. ONCE YOUR IN MOTION AND YOU SHIFT FROM 1st GEAR YOU CAN RELEASE THE CLUTCH QUICKER BUT DO NOT POP IT. ALWAYS BRING IT UP USING YOUR FOOT. HOPE THIS HELPS YOU. THERE REALLY IS ENJOYMENT IN DRIVING A MANUAL.
your CAPS LOCK key is stuck.
Please stop yelling. We can hear you fine.
Wow, I was just about to ask something along these lines in a new thread, then searched for any existing discussion about it on the SMDB, and found my own old post from years ago basically asking the same thing 
The difference is, now it’s no longer theoretical for me - I’ve just bought my first new (to me) MT vehicle, a 16 year old used BMW Z3. I took a 2 hour stick shift driving lesson first, and figured the rest would come fairly naturally after a few days of driving.
I keep reading/hearing different, even wildly different takes on what to expect from a clutch’s lifespan, and what “normal best practice” is. This is a bit of a concern for me as this car is on its original clutch, after 16 years and 4 or 5 previous owners but only 86,500 miles. Will I have to change it soon? How could I know, and what are my options? And how should I drive it before and afterward?
Some folks claim they’ve gotten 150,000, even 200,000+ miles out of a clutch, yet others give 60,000 or 70,000 miles as a rule of thumb for “typical” clutch life. Most make caveats about “if you drive a lot in congested areas”, which of course sums up my life in NYC, without saying exactly what I’m supposed to do about it.
To sum up what I’ve read and heard:
The car has a dry unlubricated clutch, which wears down over time. Slipping the clutch somewhat to start smoothly from a dead stop is normal and unavoidable, but this action is synonymous with clutch wear. However, holding the clutch at the friction point for extended periods of time is like constantly starting the car from a dead stop in terms of clutch wear.
Finally, it stresses the clutch’s “throwout bearing” to hold it down for a long time for no good reason - like coasting to a stop with the clutch down, or waiting for a stop light with the clutch down for the entire cycle instead of dropping to neutral. And it’s bad to put the car suddenly into gear at too high of an RPM so that the engine bucks, like downshifting at too high a speed (without blipping the throttle to rev match), or intentionally revving the engine in neutral and then dropping into gear to peel off the line.
That’s “theory”, now my questions about “practice”: how much shorter are we talking about?
I asked this of my 2-hour MT driving instructor - I kept releasing the clutch too soon, effectively popping the clutch, while doing dead starts or while parallel parking, because I was afraid of holding it in the friction zone and damaging the clutch. He told me not to worry about it, that that was normal use of the clutch. When I forced myself to just use the clutch as I would on my motorcycle, I got it pretty smooth by revving the engine up as I released the clutch, instead of trying to give the car gas as soon as I found the clutch biting and then releasing the clutch as soon as possible.
So I asked him how often he had to change his clutch, since he was using his personal vehicle (a mid-2000s Honda Accord V6) to give these newbie lessons, heavily focused on dead start and staring on a hill types of exercises, a few times a week. He said his last clutch lasted about 80,000 miles.
When riding my 650cc motorcycle which has a wet clutch, I maintain a steady low RPM and feather the clutch to maintain smooth control at low speeds (0->10->0 MPH cycles, as in start/stop traffic). In Googling for people’s takes on how to drive a stick shift car in such conditions, there are guys - like this one on YouTube - who basically drive the way I’d ride a bike (if I weren’t about to split between the cars and get by the traffic that way…), and lots of people who tear into him for “killing” his clutch.
The obvious alternative is to do what Echoreply described - wait for more free space to build up in front so that I can fully release the clutch before having to stop again, as opposed to creeping along with the clutch either disengaged (wearing the throwout bearing) or partially engaged (wearing the clutch surface). I guess when I come to a stop I still have to wear on the throwout bearing because I probably won’t want to shift into neutral (as at a stoplight) because traffic is probably gonna move again in 5-10 seconds.
But that seems impossible too, at least around here. I’d have to have at least a full car length’s distance to be able to release the clutch fully before having to brake/clutch again to come to a (full) stop. If I leave that open, someone’s gonna take the space. There’s a reason bumper to bumper traffic is bumper to bumper.
I have to think judicious use of clutch control is how most drivers in Europe and the UK drive, who also have inner city traffic in London, Paris, etc., drive all the time, yeah?
I don’t want to “kill” my clutch, but the goal of my driving this car is not to never get a new clutch, either. I read of people saying “I’ve seen people need new clutches in just one week of bad driving!!!”, which sounds absurd. Or, “you’ll need a new clutch every year slipping it that much”, which is scary, but is that based in reality or not? My erstwhile instructor says not.
This car won’t be my daily commuting vehicle so hopefully this just won’t happen all that often, but I guess what I’m asking is this: let’s say I put in a new clutch at 90,000 miles on this car, go with a Kevlar clutch that claims “2-3 the lifespan wear from OEM”, and just drive what I would call naturally - not intentionally killing the clutch, and not riding other people’s bumpers, but also not being particularly afraid of using clutch control in stop and go traffic (and actually going to neutral in “STOPPPPP… and go?” type traffic where it’s mostly “stop” and occasional “go”)… What should I expect? I’d be fine with even just 60,000 miles. I probably won’t put that many miles on this car for the rest of its life.
A lot depends on how those 4 or 5 previous owners drove it.
I bought a little Nissan truck several years ago that had about 50,000 miles on it, and the clutch was shot. Since I was buying it from a dealer, I made them change the clutch before I would buy the truck. I put 200,000 miles on that truck, and the clutch was still good when I got rid of it.
Don’t ride the clutch, but don’t pop it either. Drive it reasonably, and even if you do a lot of stop and go traffic you should get somewhere in the neighborhood of 100,000 miles out of a decent clutch.