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What's your advice for someone driving their first manual transmission car? (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world
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[–] 59 points 1 year ago (14 children)

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.

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  • [–] 24 points 1 year ago

    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.

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  • [–] 14 points 1 year ago

    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.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    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.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    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

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    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.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    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.

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