You’re going to drive it without lessons? Is that legal where you live? I’m confused about the question
I was just asking for general tips tbh, I have experience driving and rode a motorcycle for several years, I just never had a manual car before. If that makes more sense?
That’s a skill that won’t apply for much longer. If possible, don’t learn.
Everything has been said here
I just wanted to say welcome to the club! Driving will be fun again :)
Lots of good advice in here for the basics. Only one I’ll bother repeating is to get used to your clutch by slowly releasing it and getting the car moving without touching the throttle at all.
Also never downshift into first. This is a bit of a soft rule since it can be done, but the speed you need to lose before you do is a lot more than any of the other gears. If it’s a 6 speed, this might even apply to 2nd gear to a degree. To figure out when it’s safe to downshift to first, redline it in first and check your speed. Never do it at or above that speed as a hard rule.
For intermediate techniques:
When shifting while moving, let off the gas a bit before pressing the clutch. The idea is to smoothly stop accelerating to reduce the jerk you’d normally get from going from accelerating, clutch (decellerating), back to accelerating once in the next gear. Your passengers will appreciate it if you can get this timing down, though if you’re on your own, it doesn’t matter as much since you can anticipate the changes in acceleration.
On the opposite end of that spectrum, practice speed shifting once you’re comfortable with clutch timing and gear positions. It’s the same motions as a normal shift, just aiming to do it all as fast as possible. It’ll give you better acceleration when you need it (very noticeable if you compare one and the other when accelerating beside another car from a stop light).
For stop and go traffic and traffic jams, instead of maintaining the same distance from the car ahead of you, try to figure out a constant speed you can maintain and let the cars ahead of you do the pull up (away from you) and then brake to a stop (while you slowly catch up to them). If you can find the right speed, you can stay in first gear instead of needing to get in gear, move up, then clutch. The “getting the car moving without throttle” skill from earlier can help here and sometimes you can go a while in a jam without touching the gas pedal. It’ll reduce the wear on your clutch and brakes if you can drive in a way that uses them less.
And an advanced technique:
Clutchless shifting. If there isn’t a lot of force on the gear, you can pop it into neutral without the clutch quite easily. And by force I mean if you aren’t accelerating or engine breaking. Getting into another gear is harder but also possible. The hard part is that you need to match the engine speed with the transmission speed for the gear you want to shift into. If they match, it’ll just slip in. But matching is easier said than done, since the car is decelerating and the engine also changes speed very quickly with no load. If the speeds are far from a match, it will feel like the gear just isn’t there. If they are kinda close, you’ll be able to find the gear but it will grind when you try to put it in all the way. If they match closely, it’ll just slip in as easily as it slipped out to neutral.
Why would you want to know how to do this? Well, for one, it’s very satisfying to do properly. But I was very glad I could do it when my clutch died. I was able to drive for another week without a clutch because I was competent enough with clutchless shifting. Note that if you need to do this, you have to turn your motor off when you stop (unless you’re on a downward slope), put it in first and start it in first gear to get moving again (which feels awful and is awful for your starter and probably not great for the whole drivetrain, so get it serviced asap but this might at least save you from needing a tow).
This is great advice here, both for moto and cars.
You can use the emergency brake to keep from rolling back if your car doesn’t have any built in rollback protection.
Just pull the e-brake with your hand, and reduce it at the same rate you engage the clutch when pulling away up hill. Easy peezy.
Otherwise, just make sure you get really good at not riding your clutch for any maneuvers. It’s easy to burn them out if you’re using your clutch to make up for bad driving habits.
A looooong time ago I learned to drive.
Figuring out the clutch was just a single driving lesson. He took me to a road which was basically a long hill with no traffic around. He got me to head up the hill in first gear, then to slowly start depressing the clutch until we stopped moving. Then he got me to just play with lowering the clutch more (we slowly start to roll back), lifting the clutch, adding some more throttle and then holding it on the clutch again, and so on - all while listening to the engine note so I could hear just before we stalled. We spent about half an hour on that hill and by the time we left it I had pretty much mastered holding the car on the clutch.
Hill starts. Pedal timing for take off from standing. There’s a little dance to learn, @Hossenfeffer@feddit.uk hill start advice should see you learning it.
Parked or driving, you’ve got to be able to take off while facing uphill without rolling back. You don’t want to roll back into the person behind you. Also a good reason not to pull up too close behind others on a hill.
Just remembered another thing he taught me which should help with standing starts.
Doing a hill start, you pop it into first gear with the clutch down while still on the hand brake.
Give it some revs (not a huge amount, and how much exactly will come with practice) and slowly start to come off the clutch. What you’re looking at is the front of the bonnet. As you get to the biting point the bonnet of the car will lift slightly. At that point you should be able to take it off the hand brake without rolling back.
Same thing if you need to do a standing reverse start on a slope, only this time you’re looking for the bonnet to dip a little.
This is what I was going to say. Practice hills.
Practice taking off from being parked uphill.
Practice taking off from being stopped downhill.
People will park/pull up almost to your bumper and give you very little wiggle room.
Except one short mention about riding the clutch, I haven’t seen this yet… Get into the habit of completely removing your foot from the clutch pedal whenever possible. Even just lightly resting your foot against the pedal can wear your clutch out prematurely. Cruising on the highway: remove your foot from the clutch pedal and rest it on the floor. Sitting at the lights: put the car in neutral and release the clutch. Put your foot on the floor until you’re ready to go. Also, it’s ok to coast to a stop with the clutch pedal depressed, but you have much more control if you downshift to a stop and you will extend the life of your brakes, too.
I was told off by my driving instructor for putting the car in neutral while sitting at the lights, he said it was due to the risk of being rear-ended and rolling forward into oncoming traffic, this isn’t a problem if you’ve got the handbrake engaged but some driving testers will have a whinge about this apparently. (At least in my area)
It’s a good habit to learn though. Also to add, resting your hand on the gearstick will wear down the transmission in a similar fashion
Your driving instructor was wrong, and not even in the realm of correct. You keep your foot on the break pedal at a light, not put the parking brake up. In no world is sitting a light in neutral with your foot on the brake any more dangerous than Any. Single. Automatic that does the exact same thing if you were to be rear ended, roll forward. Except in this case, with your foot off the brake, the vehicle with an auto is going to roll slightly faster, because it’s having torque applied.
Edit: oh ya, if you’re putting your handbrake up while at a light, it makes you slower to react to changing circumstances. I’ll give a scenario that I saw 3 times today: You’re a new and inexperienced driver and a emergency vehicle comes from around a corner behind you while you’re sitting at a light, and you’re in the outermost lane which currently has the least traffic in it, and you have to move for it to get past. Which outcome seems more likely, A) the new and inexperienced driver smoothly releases the handbrake, applies the clutch and throttle equally while having slidden the shifter expertly into 1st gear, or 2) they shift into 3rd because its probably not the smoothest gearbox for their first manual and then dump the clutch with no throttle, stall, try to fire it up, remember they need to apply the clutch, start it and then stall into 3rd, then same thing after shifting into 1st but the handbrake is still up?
Yeah I don’t disagree with you whatsoever, and the only time I actually use the handbrake in this situation is for one set of lights in my hometown because they take 5 minutes to goddamn change.
I’m more pointing out that driving instructors will have little quirks about things like this so going for a test in a manual can be more of a nightmare, especially now that manual trans is considered a hobbyist/enthusiast thing nowdays.
You wouldn’t just use the foot brake if you’re in neutral?
Apparently it’s because there’s a chance your foot could come off the brake if you’re rear ended so the car has momentum forward and no brake applied.
It’s just a pedantic rule from my neck of the woods and most people would never do it the ‘correct’ way for daily driving, but if you’re going for your licence test the driving instructors might get anal over small things like this.
That’s the same as automatic though. Are you also told you put those in park?
People will be annoyed with you and honk at you when you stall at a traffic light or something. Know and accept that fact. Do not mind them. Take your time to do things right. With time you’ll gain muscle memory and you won’t have to think about it at all. Until then, don’t mind the impatient drivers.
I watched my ex drive a manual for over a year. I intently focused on when he was shifting and what not. When I got the car finally for myself, I just got in and went. I had a friend show me how to reverse in the parking lot. I called my supervisor and told her, “I’m driving the kia in today myself, I might be late” and I took my first ride. Made it to work on time, but stalled everywhere I went for two weeks until I got the hang of it. Took a bit longer to get the hang of downshifting.
Dont panic when you stall! You’re just rebooting, keep going!
There’s already plenty of good advice here. The one that I think is missing is that the clutch pedal probably has like 10 inches of travel, but it only cares about 1 inch of it. All the rest is just slop. You need to figure out where that zone is, and get good at hitting the start of that spot quickly.
Once you can get to the start of that zone reliably, then you can start working on how fast you release the clutch through that zone. The more power you’re applying with the throttle pedal, the faster you can release the clutch through this zone.
That depends greatly on the age/design of the car/truck. I’ve driven some that barely let you shift with the pedal in the floor, or like my new car, you barely even touch it and the clutch is slipping. My first car was somewhere in the middle; a few inches to fully disengage, with a couple to spare.
As with most things that you have to actually interact with, you have to get a feel for it before you’ll have perfect stop/starts.
If you stall and everypne starts getting angry, ignore them and do your thing slowly and safely.
Safety first!
Yup. Once you recover from a stall a few times you can get pretty fast at it, but don’t worry about going slow and methodical.
If you release the clutch slow enough, in most cars you can get moving just with idle engine.
Practice in a parking lot if you can, and just do that over and over until you understand the friction point.
Getting moving from a dead stop in first or reverse is really the only hard part of driving a manual, shifting up through the gears from there is trivial.
Learn to shift based off the sound of the engine, dont stare at the tachometer.
If you already know how to drive, learning manual isnt so hard. You are going to stall it out, you arent hurting anything but your pride when you do.
A point on stalling: don’t panic! You’re gonna stall first in line at the stop light and you’re gonna look in the mirror at that long line of cars behind you, but don’t panic! Take a breath, clutch in and start the engine back up.
We made our kids go to a church parking lot and drive without the gas pedal. There was much bitching and screaming, but they both learned pretty quickly. Backing up through the circle drive without hitting the curb took much much longer.
Learn to shift based off the sound of the engine, don’t stare at the tachometer.
Unless you’re like my grandpa who had his engine replaced at 20k miles because he revved the engine until he could hear it running before putting it into gear. Between quieter modern engines, and his hearing not being as good as it once was, that meant he redlined it in the driveway every time he started the engine.
He only got a couple more years out of the new engine, but that was because he couldn’t turn his head very well either so he didn’t bother looking before changing lanes.
The advice is more meant for changing through gears, not starting from a stop. As mentioned, you don’t really need much gas to get going.
Make sure you press down the clutch all the way
In my experience, releasing the clutch without adding throttle will only get you moving in a diesel car.
Gasoline engines will stall much faster, which is part of the reason learning vehicles are all diesel.
I’ve never driven a car that couldn’t do this, and I’ve driven at least a dozen manual transmission cars and trucks, all gas. Hell my beater right now doesn’t have first gear, and I have no problems starting in second just idling. You just need to be really slow and attentive to your rpms. Not that you should always start rolling like this, but I agree with the comment above that it’s an excellent learning exercise. I always start with this one when I teach other people how to drive stick with great success, and I wish that I started with this exercise when I was learning.
Works I’m my 1L petrol car. You just need to be gentle.
I’m guess that you don’t live in the US? Almost all cars in the US–whether training vehicles or not–are gasoline, and it’s mostly larger pickup trucks that are diesel. VW is one of the few companies that sells consumer cars that are diesel, and I’m not sure that they do anymore, not after there was that huge scandal about intentionally cheating EPA emissions standards with their diesel cars a decade back.
Learn to shift based off the sound of the engine, dont stare at the tachometer.
Do not do this.
Every engine has a different redline. The redline is based mostly on piston mass, which doesn’t necessarily correlate directly to engine displacement, given that it’s common to have 4, 6, or 8 cylinders in a car. If you’re shifting primarily based on engine sound, you can be shifting too low in one car, and then too high in another. The tachometer is a much more reliable way of learning where you should shift in any given vehicle.
Also, constantly running your car in the maximum power band–which tends to be close to the redline–probably isn’t great for it.
I don’t think they were saying you shouldn’t ever look at the tacho, but that you should learn to be able to pick your shift points without having to look at the tacho.
As you say you do want to figure out what revs works best for a particular vehicle (having driven/ridden vehicles with redlines between 2500 and 19000rpm there I can say there is a little bit of variability to be found out there) but it shouldn’t take long to figure out what this sounds and feels like for regular use.
Many cars and trucks don’t even have a tach. Older Ford focus’s don’t, they just have a shift light. I used to drive a 70s Ford ranger that had neither. Don’t get me wrong I wish it did, but it’s only a nice-to-have for regular driving. Shifting off sound is fine, but it’s not just sound, it’s the vibrations in your seat, how the engine reacts to gas pedal inputs, etc. I only look at the tach when I need to downshift to pass.
I learned on a 2000 Kia Sephia. Five speed, little four cylinder engine, that shit did not have a tachometer. I had to learn by the sound.
Even when I got into my Vr6 Jetta, or the Nissan spec-v (which had 6 gears) I was able to adjust my driving to the car easily because I first learned with sound. You learn the engine.
Probably try learning using both tbh
Looking at the tach is so useful through. You can learn how your car can go into gear at different speeds depending on if you’re going uphill, downhill, or flat.
One I haven’t seen here yet. If your battery dies, you can usually get the car rolling (neutral with people pushing, or turn down a small hill) and once moving a bit you can throw it straight into second gear and hit the gas and it should cause the car to start and you can drive it to a destination to replace the battery (or just let it charge the battery if you left the headlights or interior lights or such on and let it die on accident). No second car/jumper cables required.
You can get an assist from a speed bump if you time it right. Just as the car apex’s the bump drop it into 2nd and the wee hill can be enough to start the car.
The first time I pop started a manual car I felt like a god lmao, it’s an awesome feature
Keep at it.
Nothing really to it, you just need time and lots of practice to build up the “muscle memory” for it, until it becomes little more than a reflex.
Lots of people talking about clutch work so I’ll mention something else - how to use the gearstick. Sounds a bit of a silly thing to talk about but how you do it can actually help.
I’ve seen various inexperienced drivers shift by grabbing the gearstick tightly and pulling it around in that same tight grip until it’s where they think the next gear should be. This usually works for getting around but it makes it hard to know what gear you’re actually shifting into and when it’s properly engaged - particularly on boxes that don’t give much feeling through the gearstick. One person in particular was repeatedly struggling with hitting the wrong gears (particularly when other things were happening) until I suggested they change this behaviour.
I recommend instead keeping a relatively loose grip on the shifter and considering changing gear a quick three part motion instead of a single one. Say for example that you’re shifting from second to third in a typical 5 speed H pattern - the three parts are you pushing up to move out of second (which you don’t need a tight grip for as it’s just pushing the shifter with your palm), centring the gearstick to below third (where you only need a loose side grip - there’s minimal force involved and keeping loose lets you feel the springs pull it where you want to be), and pushing upwards into third. Your grip should be changing a bit depending on what part of the shift you’re in and what gears you’re moving in/out of, I find this does help with improving feel and accuracy.
…also, jiggle it to check if you’re in neutral, then jiggle it again just to be sure: ooh, now you’re stopped at a light, better jiggle it…
(okay, that’s an easy tease, but as a compulsive habit it really does help cultivate kinesthetic proficiency through tactile feeback)
This isn’t bad advice and is similar to advice given to me when I first started. It’s bad form to leave your hand always on the shifter. I was told it can wear out the linkage faster as your always putting pressure on it.
