Learning Manual

I think you're supposed to switch to neutral, brake to a stop, and keep your foot off the clutch unless you're changing gears. Although I've heard you shouldn't switch until you're at a relatively low speed.

What about not just stopping but slowing down. Say I'm in 4th gear and turning onto a slower road, should I be switching to a lower gear too? Does that really matter? On top of that how do I know when to swich to a higher gear?

If I am going to make a turn while in 4th I will switch to 2nd.

You switch when you have too much or too little resistance, else the throttle won't be doing much.

So it really is like a multi-gear bike. It's much more practical to accelerate to 80 in 4th than in 1st, that makes sense. So it's largely a feel thing for when you switch, you get used to what speeds work well with each of the gears, right?

Brake -> clutch in. Complete stop.
>shift to first, clutch in until green light
>shift to neutral, chill until green light

If you want to coast, then coast...
>coasting in 5th gear
>red light up ahead
>engine starts feeling anemic
>clutch in, shift 5th -> 4th, slowly let clutch out

You can start rev matching and whatnot once you get to know your car better. For now, these procedures should be more than good enough. Fuck anyone who says to shift until neutral BEFORE coming to a complete stop. That's a stupid fucking habit that unnecessarily complicates driving stick

>Pasadena

Hello neighbor. I first learned manual in the Rose Bowl parking lot lol.

Well each gear has a limit, in mine 1st is 40mph, second is around 70... 3rd 103, 4th 130ish.. 5th til the limiter.. I think.

Anyways, you'll figure out what speeds are best for each gear. Just don't shift into a gear whose limit is below the speed you are going or you'll fuck up the gearbox.

>On top of that how do I know when to swich to a higher gear?

Rule of thumb when you're first learning is upshift at 3000 rpm (or thereabouts).
Don't become obsessed with the tachometer. After a while you will just know when to shift using your ears.

you'll get the feel naturally. Untill then, if you get stuck stopped on a hill, engage the e brake when you go into first to stop from rolling into the car in back of you

But Tsuchiya and other drivers are on and off the clutch super fast 100% smooth
How?

Hey neighbors, I worked at a dealership in Pasadena, that's how I learned manual.

OP here. I'm honestly not too worried about the clutch anymore, what gets me is the fucking people I share this city with. Driving auto was taxing enough, with how erratically people drive in LA, but stick is a whole new level attention that I need to have to everything.

I barely know how to do stick, just the basics, but I'm already in love. It's a new world of driving, auto can't even compare.

Thanks man, I've definitely had my fuck ups. I got a 2001 540i, the car I've been saving for since high school ended, and every time I fuck up an upshift or downshift I cringe a bit since this isn't a beater.

You're definitely right, I let the clutch out too quick at first, and I still do now. I think my mind is just being retarded and not always knowing what to do with my left foot when things aren't going correctly.

I put the car in neutral and get off the clutch. You don't want to always have the clutch down, it wears it out.

I actually accidentally go onto a hill during the drive home, my dad helped me with the handbrake but I got it eventually. Now that was a small hill, I'm avoiding big hills for now. I will force myself to learn though.

Practice. Its all about timing.

Fast and smooth =/= dumping the clutch.

yeah, low gears for power and the higher you go the faster you go with less power.

Used or new?

It's nice there but still too many people for my tastes. I was in Corning, NY a few days ago and it reminded me of a quiet Pasadena or Los Gatos, but it was past 5 on a Sunday and already half of the restaurants were closed...

tips? yeah never let anyone else drive it. I once lost a clutch that way.

I've been driving stick 15 years and stopping on really bad hills still freak me out. Especially when the car in back creeps right on you. No one thinks "hey, the guy in front of me may have a stick and I should give him a few feet" anymore

Wat a stik?

So basically don't shift into 1 for some reason while going 100, makes sense.

New.

learn to take off with the clutch only consistently (obviously on flat land). Know how to hill start (practice in empty parking garages or shipping docks near a warehouse) consistently. it can be scary going up a steep incline and the dumbass bitch behind you in a CUV is 1inch away creeping up on you. Leave a gap for yourself to constantly coast in 1st or 2nd. The people behind you might get mad but fuck them. Same if you stall, it happens.
Once you've got that down I would suggest to learn to rev match in higher gears ie 6->5 or 5->4.

you're going to stall if you're learning, but thats okay. sometimes you can save it with clutching in or just more gas.

When I got my first manual I somehow ended up on a country road with a hill at a light. Stalled it for 3 light cycles with people honking at my ass even though it was 2 lanes.

disco stick

>Brake -> clutch in. Complete stop.

So regardless of what gear and vehicle speed I'm in, I can start braking and clutch in, get to a complete stop and it will be fine for the engine and transmission?

Yes. If you're in neutral or clutched in, the car will roll to a stop. Avoid riding the clutch too much though, neutral is good when you know you're stopping for a long time.

You don't need to be in neutral to brake. Just downshift to 4th or 3rd and brake. It'll get you almost to a stop, just shift to neutral when your rpms get low. That way you can still accelerate if you need to.

Despite what some boy racers on here say, you don't have to rev match. You're not hurting anything.

To downshift without revmatching, you just let the clutch out slower, right?

don't worry about revmatching so much if you're not going to blip. better to blip and be 100-500 rpm off than letting out the clutch slow when you're 1k off or more.

You get it to the bite point, move very slow, just let it engage, then clutch out.

I got my FiST a month ago and I don't even think about how I'm doing this stuff, man. Just drive and you'll get it.

Thanks everyone for the advice and encouragement. It wasn't just me posting questions in this thread so you definitely helped a few people out.

Fucking normies riding up on my asshole while on a hill.

I can't stand normal people.

It's so weird seeing drivers that can't use a gear stick. Learning to drive must be super easy in america huh?

Just coast in the gear you're in until (if) right before the RPM's get too low, then push in the clutch pedal. Start braking depending on how fast you're going and or approaching the red light.

Alternative (no rev matching) is to put the car into a lower gear and thus using the engine to brake. Which lower gear to choose depends on how much braking you want and perhaps how loud you want to brake (putting the car into a lower gear to brake increases the RPM making the car louder). Also start use the normal brakes somewhere in this procedure.

Learn to get it rolling in a parking lot just by letting off the clutch slowly 25 times in a row, this helps you find the bite point

how do i deal with people getting mad behind me when i stall?

flash your stick.

Everyone giving advice on how to, here's how not to, as long as you do nothing, NOTHING like this giant cock sucker does youtube.com/watch?v=6N4tLAAy5Fg you should be good.

Shift a lot and shift early. Helps to stay in the powerband, forces you to anticipate changes in traffic pace, makes for a nicer ride for your passengers (once you get the shifting down smooth) and you get to practice shifting. No downsides.

Ignore them. If they can't wait for a couple of seconds extra too bad for them.

Print out a "Sorry for stalling, I'm learning manual" paper and attach it to the back window. It may help.

Motorcycle rider here.

I can't imagine how lame it is to drive a manual car. Your clutch is way less forgiving, techniques like rev matching are way less intuitive, and your shift sequence makes zero fucking sense. Just drive an auto

>shift sequence makes zero fucking sense

.. what?

What car do you have? I have found that newer cars tend to have fuck all for clutch feel. My Saab 9000 has a super smooth and sensitive clutch that gives lots of feedback, but I learned on a Mini Cooper and an Audi A1 and have driven other newer cars and all of them had an extremely numb clutch. Older cars are better to learn with IMO.

I'm not sure what causes this, my guess would be the dual-mass flywheels (most retarded invention ever if you ask me) in these new cars but really I have no îdea.

Side streets. Neighborhoods.
Start there. Learn there.
Stop. Go. Stop. Go.
Better than wide open and less people like me behind you getting pissed off from your inexperience.

...

I have two, one good story, and a bad story.

>Bimmerfest 2014
>Buy a E30 2 days before.
>Friend with a E36 M3 teaches me how to drive manual within the first hour of driving it, then drove from Bay Area to LA. Pick up on it really fast.
>Going up hill, didn't understand how to downshift, people passing me in the left lane because my car is slowing down at WOT on 5th gear.
>Had to call friend during the convey on how to downshift.
>Learn downshifting during the trip.
>Start downshifting a lot, feel like a racecar driver.
>Love manual transmission forever.

Now for the bad one.
>Out of our group of friends that drive BMWs, and generally circlejerks about BMWs, one friend is a Honda fag.
>Constantly spouts Honda shit at us, overall tired of hearing it. Maybe he should go find Honda friends.
>Gets his first BMW to fit in with us; some shitty manual trans 318ti for $2,500.
>Takes him 3 days of constant teaching for him to sorta understand how to drive it. M3 friend sorta disappointed on how long it's taking him to learn stick shift.
>A week later, he rear ends a parked corolla because he confused the reverse gear for 1st gear.
>Person inside the parked corolla gets real angry with Honda friend, almost fights him.
>mfw
>Honda friend sells the E36, says he'll get a DCT NSX, and wreck all of us.
>Same friend stances his automatic civic on coilovers.

>I put the car in neutral and get off the clutch. You don't want to always have the clutch down, it wears it out.
This is wrong and you should not have the car in neutral while moving. The clutch is only worn out by slipping it. Having the clutch disengaged spins the release bearing but you really shouldn't be worried about that giving out before the clutch disk, plus some cars (like mine) have it touching the pressure plate fingers all the time, even with the clutch engaged.

tl;dr don't coast in neutral, keeping the clutch disengaged does not put any wear on it.

Just the basic stuff.
Learn how to launch quickly and without spinning the wheels, it's essential for roundabouts in Europe, probably not so much where you live.
Learn at what revs it's best to shift so you're not left with no torque at the higher gear, probably not as necessary if you're not driving an econobox, but still don't shift too early.
Learn to shift smoothly both on your way up and on the way down (i.e give it a bit of revs when in neutral and you're downshifting), look at your passengers if they lurch forward and back too much you're not doing it right.
And obviously learn how to launch on an incline without letting the car crawl back or giving it so much gas it spins the tires.
It becomes second nature after time and you don't think about it.

It's not that hard.
It's really not that fucking hard.

Unless you're a moron, at least. I picked it up in a couple of hours, and a girl I tried to teach got it in about 15 minutes of playing with the clutch.

>always put your foot on the clutch when you start the car
>don't ride the clutch
>try to learn how to rev match, makes it a lot smoother

I pretty much always leave my car in gear when I park too, don't trust the handbrake that much.

Have fun and enjoy. I assume in the US there aren't separate licences for automatic and manual cars? In the UK most people pass in a manual and can drive both, but some people learn and take their test in an automatic and aren't allowed to drive manuals.

OP again. I think it's harder here. Back in Hungary, I would have taken some tape and put a bit "T" on the back of my car to let people know I'm a learner. You can put a big ass "learner" sticker on here too, but most people still won't realize that you're learning stick as well, and that stick is far harder to catch onto at first than just pushing a lever with your foot.

I say this from experience, never ever feel rushed, or like you owe it to someone to fix a mistake. That's dangerous. The only accident I've ever caused was when I let my stress over holding up traffic drive me to make a stupid mistake.

E39 540i. The clutch feel is really good according to my ex-formula 3 father. Also the 540i has a lot of torque, so stalling isn't such a risk.

Jesus Christ. I feel the stick driver patrician contempt building up inside me, and I've only driven stick for a day.

Look up a WikiHow article on "how to drive manual" and go practice in a parking lot for an hour. If you can't at least accomplish starting and upshifting at that point you really shouldn't be driving at all.

No, they give you one license for all vehicles below a certain weight, that's it.

OP the biggest revelation from moving from automatic was this

When you start from a stop, it's clutch then gas. Gassing it like an auto and then declutching will be irritatingly uncomfortable. Depress the clutch like you would press the gas pedal on an extremely slow takeoff in an auto.

when i bought my first new car i bought a manual transmission maxima and drove it off the lot. that was my first time with a manual other than a 10 minute drive in a friends jeep. trial by fire. wish i still had the car but some old folks totalled it a few years later.

I miss learning manual

>pull up to left turn on a busy street
>light for our lanes turns red
>stall

>turn on radio
>stall

Don't worry about handbrake nonsense when hillstarting, it's needless complication. Just use your brake pedal to hold yourself so people can see your lights and when you need to go bring up the clutch to the bite point then take your foot off the brake and give it a little more throttle than usual.

The RPM's are so close that they can pretty much dump the clutch. Well, to us it looks like they are dropping it but they are just releasing it much quicker than we can.

More clutch slipping is better when starting

You can fine tune it later. The clutch is made to take the abuse. Low RPM slippage won't hurt it that badly.

Light flywheels

Daily drivers have heavier flywheels that increase the inertia of the engine/input and increase the time you have to wait before getting off the clutch if you want to shift smoothly without grinding it. They also make it easier to move the car in the first place, so there's that.

I almost did exactly that yesterday, with a cop right across from me. I didn't want to rev high because this car makes a lot of noise easily, so I was really light on the throttle, nearly stalled.

Kek, I wouldn't worry too much about cops and tire chirps. It'll worry you so much you might just stall.

>keeping the clutch disengaged does not put any wear on it.

Yes it does, on the throwout bearing.

>akshually...
Throwout bearing is not the friction material of the clutch. You know what he meant.

Hey man, I'm just sayin is all.
Fried friction plate or worn out TOB, either way the transmission will need to be dropped.
Sure you can get away with it for a while, just don't make it a habit.

>tl;dr don't coast in neutral

Why not?

Yeah this makes no sense. Why not coast in neutral, what's the harm?

You fucking burger autists talk about driving manuel like it's rocket science. It's literally second nature.

>hurr muh rev matching

Fuck off with your retarded autist shit, you're on the road, not on a racing track.

>cuck with a diesel shitbox

lel, no wonder you don't gpo to the track

t. """""""""race car""""""""" miata owner

Also, I'm mostly thinking about coasting for short stretches

t. cuck with a diesel shitbox

>wiggles shifter to make sure everyone knows he's driving manual

>logs into blacked.com to make sure everyone knows he is a cuck with a diesel shitbox

you literally have a diesel fwd shitbox, you will lose everytime

That's some nice projection, faggot.

thats a nice fwd diesel cuckbox, faggot

>said no one

>cute miata, user... I bet you must pull serious fat dick on that
Said literally everyone.

>fwd cuckbox diesel europoor tripfag thinks I have a miata

top lel

still, a miata is miles better than your fwd diesel cuckbox, kek literally Fiat literally had to use a miata for their new sports car because they can't engineer for shit

>he doesn't even mention his """""""""race car""""""""

>still, a miata is miles better than your fwd diesel cuckbox, kek literally Fiat literally had to use a miata for their new sports car because they can't engineer for shit
Yeah, they grabbed the miata chassis and made it even better.

I have already posted my car the last time I was cucking you, fag

>made it even better.
considering its slower than a cup miata, i don't think so

>fwd diesel cuckbox
top lel

>vapefag wrx
>can't make this shit up
kek

>>considering its slower than a cup miata, i don't think so
>implying an Abarth 124 doesn't completely BTFO the 2.0 Miata
Keep dreaming, ricerboi.

Good post man. So method 2 is the better way to set off if you have a lolnotorque 4cyl? Rev to 1-1.5k and slowly release clutch?

>implying an Abarth 124 doesn't completely BTFO the 2.0 Miata
the abarth is slower than a cup miata aswell, keep on assraging

>he literally drives a diesel fwd 4 door cuckbox
KEK

literally a cuckbox, it even has 4 doors

>the abarth is slower than a cup miata aswell, keep on assraging
Uhum, bby. Believe your dreams.

>>literally a cuckbox, it even has 4 doors
>he literally drives a factory riced corolla

>he actually belives an abarth is faster than an actual track car
top lel, not that you know what a track car feels like, considering you have a fwd diesel cuckbox
keep on assraging, literally keking right now

>he literally drives a factory riced corolla
with actual racing pedigree and much much faster than ur fwd diesel cuckbox, kek

how do girls react when they see your poorfag fwd diesel shitbox?

>subaru
>racing pedigree
AHAHAHA
How do you feel knowing a Citroen Xsara has more racing pedigree than your riced corolla?

>how do girls react when they see your poorfag fwd diesel shitbox?
I don't need a car for girls to show interest :)
But whatever helps you get laid.

Oh, totally forgot...

>poorfag
>drives a $2000 riced corolla
kek

>stall
>[spoiler]stall[/spoiler]

>Citroen Xsara
>winning production based rally championships
kek, try again

>I don't need a car for girls to show interest :)
yesh I bet you tell them "I'll give you and your boyfriend a ride in the rear of my fwd diesel cuckbox"
kek

>he literally belives I paid 2k for my STi
kek

a fwd diesel shitbox, absolute kek

Driving manual really is a skill, Iv met many people who "drive" manual but they shift so rough.

There's a difference between driving a manual and actually being good at it. If you break it down to the most simple terms, yes, it's easy but there are so many nuances that your average driver just doesn't get.

Also, engines make a HUGE difference. Boosted 4 cylinders want to stall at the drop of a hat and lug easily, but driving a torquey v8 or diesel is so fucking easy. You can virtually sidestep the clutch and the engine still won't stall.

>>kek, try again
>b-but it won rally stages nobody cares about

>>yesh I bet you tell them "I'll give you and your boyfriend a ride in the rear of my fwd diesel cuckbox"
Again, nice projection, vapefag.

>a fwd diesel shitbox, absolute kek
Which has more value than your vapebox.

If you can drive manual, you can drive a torquey v8 or a gutless N/A 1.2 with ease.
It's all about clutch control.

And driving a boosted 4 pot is easy as fuck.