Thinking of buying a car over the state line. Its a manual, and i have no experience at all with manual...

Thinking of buying a car over the state line. Its a manual, and i have no experience at all with manual. Im gonna teach myself in a parking lot for an hour and then drive back 100 miles on the interstate. Any thoughts?

Interstate driving in a manual car is piss easy, since you'll hardly ever have to shift.

If you care about cars at all you'll drive manual without stalling within 5 days of practice, as long as you get used to easing off the clutch really slowly

You will shift smoothly in 1 1/2 weeks, maybe sooner if you get the hang of it.

The #1 advice though for learning is to not shit yourself if you stall. Just stay calm, put it into neutral and restart. If people don't understand, it's their problem, not yours.

Just give it more gas than you'd otherwise need to when you let off the clutch going into first. You can either spin or stall and a little tire chirp isn't a problem as long as your not trying to get out of a parking space.

main thing is not to be afraid, if you are really really bad at it you might fuck up a clutch, but consider it worthy investment for learning manual.
just dont ride the clutch, meaning dont keep your clutch pressed in while at stoplights, put it in neutral

Once you get to the overdrive gear, you're set.
Hell, just practice getting out of first and you should be fine.
Don't worry too much about rev matching and heel toe and all that shit. You can fine tune that later.

Starting is the hard part of driving a manual. Hill starting is the final boss level of driving a manual. If you can do that, you've beaten the game.

If you have hill start assist it's easy mode unless at a slight incline

...That is not what it means to riding a clutch. If anything that's more like riding the throw-out-bearing.

What kind of car is it? I'm guessing it's either a Murican muscle car or a basic trim econobox. If it's the first, they're pretty easy to drive manual, if it's the latter, that's where you're likely to have a stallfest at a traffic light.

Everyone says when coming to a stop, coast in neutral and brake or go down to first gear and brake
Why can't I do both? Coast in neutral and brake, complete stop then shift into 1st while I wait for the light to turn

Because sitting at a stop with the clutch depressed will wear out your throw-out bearing. Plus it's more comfortable to just sit in neutral with your foot on the brake

There's also almost no reason to go to first gear in a manual either, unless you're starting from a stop or moving at like 1-3 mph. If you're coming to a stop the best thing to do is shift down to second gear and start braking, then once your RPMs get to around 1500-2000 clutch in and shift to neutral and continue to come to a stop. Although there won't be much more stopping to do

People use the argument of "stay in 1st so you can move out of the way away from potential danger faster", is this a reasonable case or are they cherry picking? A lot of youtube comments I've seen are adamant about staying in 1st
I assume in general a throw bearing is more difficult to replace than a clutch

You're more likely to have to reverse quickly at a stoplight.

>People use the argument of "stay in 1st so you can move out of the way away from potential danger faster
>A lot of youtube comments I've seen
>taking youtube comments seriously

I have literally never heard this before. If you took a driver's test in England, and you take the manual test they teach you to put the car in neutral, keep your foot on the brake and pull the parking brake at every stoplight or stop.

Plus, the amount of time to step on the clutch, move your shifter to first and engage the vehicle is negligible compared to that of an automatic. There is no reasonable case to be leaving your car in first, it just causes excess wear.

This is also true

Rev matching, heel and toe only matters if you're racing. For normal driving, you'll rarely encounter a situation where you'd need it, especially if you're sticking to the posted speed limits.

I don't heel toe but I try to rev match when I am going at faster speeds in order to not slow down.

>put the car in neutral, keep your foot on the brake and pull the parking brake at every stoplight or stop
Well, that's excessive. I usually neutral mine and keep my foot on the brake though.

It's so you don't roll out into traffic in the event of an accident, at least that was the explanation I got for it being a euro law.

I remember when I was a youngun, some kids if they knew it was a manual and the brakes weren't on, would nudge up to the back bumper and start pushing the car forward.

That's actually hilarious.

We just shat off the overpass when convertibles went by.

That's boring driving, though.

Neglecting rev matching will wear out your clutch

...

That's not the only major benefit though. Failing to rev match can cause the wheels to lock o\up or the car to lunge forward uncontrollably.

Driving a manual car on an interstate where you're driving in a straight line in max gear isnt a problem ,its getting in motion from first gear without stalling and doing hill starts without the handbrake.

When you rev match do you just dump the clutch ?
I've been feathering it forever and saw a video and it looked like the guy just pops it...

I like to give it gas as I put the clutch in then quickly change gears and drop the clutch when the rev is matched

You'll probably stall out in neighborhoods/traffic lights.

But your biggest concern is that you are driving interstate without being registered. Are you going to be doing plate swap on your own plates or is the owner giving you his old plates?