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I taught a 16-year-old (not my son) to drive a stick. It was easy. I checked online and there's a place that will teach you the basics for $295. I'd do it for h
by AlbertCory 4y ago
I taught a 16-year-old (not my son) to drive a stick. It was easy. I checked online and there's a place that will teach you the basics for $295. I'd do it for half. There's not much demand for that, unfortunately.
The biggest magic tricks to teaching were (1) teaching him to think about gear changes before actually doing them, and (2) being relaxed about mistakes.
For (1) I would drive, and have him tell me when to shift. This gets over the intellectual hurdle of coordinating engine speed with road speed.
For (2), I just said, "OK, you're going to stall the car, and you're going to grind the gears. Everybody does. It's no big deal. Here, watch, I'll do it." Then I'd stall & grind the gears, show him to get out of the grinding, and laugh about it. I think anxiety is the biggest problem.
I'm sure if it's your own son or daughter, it gets more complicated :)
- convolvatron 4y agodon't forget the first time you have to start on a hill. or brake. first time I had to brake hard I forgot to put in the clutch and that was the whole front end.
- wrycoder 4y agoEr, what? It should have just killed the engine.
- convolvatron 4y agoas the engine was stalling out it caught and lurched forward
- airstrike 4y agoisn't braking more effective if you don't put in the clutch? it kills the engine, but has the advantage of using said engine to break
- ilyt 4y agoIt is entirely irrelvant in any modern car as brakes are always stronger than your tire grip, unless you track the car and break over and over again often. But theoretically not on hard braking as plainly engine have enough inertia that it wouldn't get to "engine braking" phase when you just slammed on brake. You'd be braking both car and engine. On light braking, sure.
- progman32 4y agoAlso, in an emergency situation, it's better to keep things consistent. Save the fancy moves for when you have time and space. Any sign of trouble? Both feet in, no hesitation. Unless you train stopping with the clutch out.
- Klonoar 4y agoMany modern stickshifts have hill assist, so if you're fortunate enough to be teaching on a model with this, you either want to temporarily disable it (if possible) or at least communicate the right way to do it and what might happen if they're going to driver an older car.
- swores 4y agoI don't know if it's just the couple of cars I've driven do it badly or if they're typical of hill assist on all cars, but I really hate this feature. It always seems to keep the break on longer than I want, and on a couple of occasions even causes me to stall because I tried to accelerate away and couldn't move. Now I usually put the hand-break on because I find it easier to find the biting point [0] and move from there (pretty much in one smooth motion, not needing to pause at the biting point). I've never bothered to think more about it, because it doesn't cause me any trouble doing that, and afaik there's no harm to the car doing it this way, but maybe somebody has advice on how to use hill assist without finding it so annoying? (Or news that in most cars, hill assist is better than the ones I've used?) [0] Biting point being where you pull your foot gradually off the clutch, not all the way but to the point that the front of the car bonnet starts to rise slightly, which is the point that you can remove the hand-break as you keep declutching without rolling backwards down the hill. Was one of the trickier things for me when learning to drive, but incredibly easy once you're used to it.
- Klonoar 4y agoI too just use the handbrake since it feels natural after growing up with it. By the time I'm accelerating I mostly don't notice if any hill-assist was engaged - but this may be a factor of my particular car, and I'm unfortunately unaware of how it feels in some other modern stickshifts.
- wildrhythms 4y agoI haven't driven a manual with hill assist, but indeed this is a difficult thing to master especially on an unfamiliar car. It takes a while to get used to the pedals on any car, much more so the clutch. Drifting backwards down a hill is a scary thing to happen at first! I find that automatic drivers aren't used to engaging with the handbrake, which is the real secret to starting up a hill.
- AlbertCory 4y agoOMG, that would be sadistic to start like that!
- u801e 4y agoThis is why I just use the parking brake to hold the car in place. Then I only really have to coordinate the use of the clutch and the accelerator without having to worry about the car moving back, no matter how steep the hill. You just have to feel the car pushing foward while the parking brake is still engaged and just release the parking brake while the car starts moving forward.
- galdosdi 4y agoThose are both really good tips for teaching driving stick, as well as (by metaphor) a lot of other things. Thanks so much for sharing!
- csw-001 4y agoThis is great advice - I learned a slightly different way… I’d saved up for a while when I was 20ish, and I wanted a NEW car. Only thing I could get a loan for was the cheapest offering - a stripped manual Honda Fit. I fell in love with it and ordered one from Japan (they didn’t have a fully stripped version for sale in my town, so it was a “special” order). Long story short, I learned to drive stick for the first time when I picked it up from the lot with zero miles and had to drive it home, and then to work the next day… that first commute was UGLY. But I more or less had the hang of it by the time I got home that night. I still drive that car daily almost two decades later - and I absolutely still love it. It’s never needed one thing beyond regular maintenance in all those 150k miles. They literally don’t make ‘um like that any more.
- mathieuh 4y agoPretty scary that you were allowed to do that, where I am in the world if you take your driving test in an automatic car you only get an automatic licence, but if you take it in a manual car you can drive manual and automatic
- onionisafruit 4y agoI learned after buying my first car too. I bought a car from my uncle in Mississippi and had to get it home to Austin. It was rough through Louisiana, but I had it down by the time I hit Texas.
- ryandrake 4y agoDid the same thing. I bought a 944 Turbo and had to learn manual while driving it home. And that thing had a clutch like a refrigerator truck.
- tspike 4y agoI've taught around a dozen folks how to drive stick, and I finally found a method that reliably worked to make it "click" more quickly. When they get in the car, I tell them to forget about the gas and brake pedals and pretend the only pedal that exists is the clutch. In first gear, I have them release it slowly until the car starts going, then have them push it in until the car rolls to a stop. Take breaks, explain what the clutch is doing. Repeat until they start getting bored. Then introduce the brake pedal. Tada! You can stop more quickly now. Finally, the gas pedal. You can push it until the engine shrieks in protest! If only there were a way to get it to quiet down but still keep your speed.... Of course, you need a very large, very flat surface for this method to work. But I've had a lot more success since starting to do it this way.
- AlbertCory 4y agoGood ideas. Watching the tach is pretty unintuitive for someone who's never driven one, too.
- Wistar 4y agoThis is basically how I taught my son to drive a manual. I used a low-torque Toyota Corolla with a 5-speed manual. I found a large, flat area—a mega-church parking lot—and, in first gear, told him he can do whatever he wants, as long as he doesn't touch the throttle. He quickly discovered the point at which the clutch bit—began to engage—and learned to get the car rolling without killing the engine. After an hour or so, he had mastered the engaging the clutch and I began to add the next steps. A couple sessions and he had the whole thing down. Eventually I taught him how to double-clutch, rev-match when downshifting, and even how to float the shift with no clutch at all. Today he owns a manual trans performance car (Z06) and has a great fondness for manuals.
- AlbertCory 4y agoHeel-and-toe: a totally lost art. Not comfortable or even possible in a lot of cars.
- 4y ago
- bluedino 4y agoAnother way to understand a clutch is to have someone drive a motorcycle (or better yet an ATV with four wheels, they don't tip over).
- kevin_thibedeau 4y agoMotorcycles are easier to manage since you have a dedicated clutch appendage and two options for activating the brakes.
- bluedino 4y agoYour left foot is dedicated to the clutch in a car
- oxfordmale 4y agoI live in Europe where driving stick was the norm until the arrival of hybrid and electrical cars. I have predominantly driven stick, and only recently driven an automatic hybrid car. From a comfort point of view I do prefer an automatic, although some petrol heads may keep preferring driving stick. However, I suspect it will become a niche within a generation.
- dzhiurgis 4y agoI lived in Europe and I'm back for few months. Automatic rental car costs 2x of normal, so naturally I'm driving stick. I absolutely hate it. It's an absolutely ridiculous bullshit that needs to go (together with ICE's). I firmly believe the only reason stick is still being sold is so that rental companies could gauge their customers.
- ilyt 4y agoDamn, wait till you get on mountain bike, it has not one but TWO sticks that shift separate gears. And TWO brakes, one for each wheel ? How it is even possible for human to have that much coordination to rein in that monster ?!
- AlbertCory 4y agoIf you're really being precise about your gears, a shift-up or -down can involve both wheels. I never do that, though.
- davidw 4y agoMost modern MTB's have abandoned a front shifter and only have one for the cogs in the rear.
- dzhiurgis 4y agoHow about a horse then… I mean I’m taking my kids to daycare. Not focusing on lanes, speed, gears, rpm’s makes lets me focus more on road, traffic and cars ahead. Why people insist being a Luddite on even most frivolous things is a virtue?
- aussiesnack 4y agoI wonder if there's a kind of collective background general knowledge that has dissipated as auto has become more common? What prompts this is just that no-one I knew had any great difficulty with clutch & gears when I learned to drive (early '80's). Autos (in rural UK) were pretty rare, and everyone before starting to drive had at least a vague idea of how to use the controls, and at least a majority of the boys had a rough idea of the underlying mechanisms. I lived on a country road and learned when I was 12 by stealing my mother's car (a Fiat 500) before she got home from work. Two or three goes and I was away. Admittedly concentrating on the clutch I did forget to steer and went off-road a couple of times.
- throwaway821909 4y agoSo much emphasis on thinking about gear changes does seem a bit unfamiliar to me - but it could just be since my first driving experience was also manual, I was learning all this in the background while my main focus was trying not to hit anything. Never did anything as exciting as you but I do feel like maybe being a passenger for so many years gives you an ear for when a gear change is needed, and you hear "sorry, wrong gear" and feel the lack of acceleration or whatever. As for /why/, I just imagined cycling up a hill.
- aussiesnack 4y agoGood point on cycling. I think it honed my intuition about gear changes too. I even had a Raleigh Chopper for a while. It sported an actual gear stick centred on the frame. I thought it the coolest thing anyone had ever sat on.
- AlbertCory 4y agoIt's actually to the point now that I've heard people say, seriously, "the way to be sure your car is never stolen is to get a manual transmission."
- ddingus 4y agoHave heard the same recently. Seems crazy, but there really are large numbers of people unable to drive manual. Rented a car in the EU and it was manual! In the US it is always automatic, unless it is a sport or special rental...
- dakr 4y agoI had a summer internship where I got bored and read wikipedia a lot. Reading about engines and transmissions there helped me a lot when I learned to drive stick. Being able to visualize what was mechanically happening gave me a little bit better intuition about what to do. I still stalled, of course, but I felt like I had a better roadmap on how to improve.
- gerdesj 4y agoIt's also worth noting that you can skip gears. For example going straight from two to four and then six when accelerating hard. It depends on the car, engine size/power, conditions, gradient and a few other things. Same when changing down. I'm personally a fan of using the gearbox to decelerate rather than just the brake. I'm currently rocking a 20 year old Nissan Micra "Twister" with an auto gearbox - a proper granddad car (I am as it turns out). It weighs about two kilos and has about 2 BHP but it is a bit of a Q ship. I've seen off some expensive cars at roundabouts with some local knowledge a careful choice of lane and a stomp on power when it counts. It does make some odd noises when turning right (a CV boot is quite fucked). Lane one on a roundabout is often quicker than lane two due to less curvature, unless you can transition from lane two to one to straighten it out. An auto always has some drive engaged so a standing start is often quicker but in a manual you can stomp on the accelerator and run up say 4000 RPM and give your clutch a good old work out whilst using the brake to hold in place. If you have enough power, you can start off in second or ideally you have one of those flappy paddle jobs and stay in first for about a half second and then change up as you go. I prefer a manual box - you feel more engaged with the vehicle but then an auto can also be played with too. You can make it change up and down when you get the hang of it by blipping the throttle and getting to know what it wants to do in certain circumstances.
- matthewdgreen 4y agoI love the feel of going straight from 2-4 on a car with a really tight shifting pattern. Used to drive my dad’s MGB a lot and boy was that car technically a mess, but the shift from 2-4 on an open country road was magic. As long as you didn’t think too much about the missing 5th gear, the useless seatbelts, or the reverse lights that only came on when they felt like it.
- progman32 4y agoMy old Alfa reliably engages the reverse lights, but often at the cost of shorting out the instrument cluster
- gerdesj 4y ago"or the reverse lights that only came on when they felt like it." Quality engineering 8) Are you really talking about a MG MGB? Mind you, your final para. description fits what the Morris Garage churned out back in the day. I went to school in Abingdon (Oxon) which is where the MG sort of wobbled onto the roads originally. I haven't seen a MGB for a while but I have driven a Midget a few times (I'm 52). My dad had a Midget back in the day after his Austin 7 passed away (it cost him £5) and the Midget was what he was driving when courting my mum. Apparently they had to use her tights to replace the fan belt when it failed (yeah, whatevs). I was probably the result ...
- jojobas 4y agoNitpicking: in modern car gearboxes the actual gears (cogs) are always engaged, and the grinding noise is made by parts that are sort of designed to take it. If you grind them a lot they'll still fail, but until they do there's no degradation to the way the gears mesh and transfer power.
- prpl 4y agoI learned first on a dirt bike (13). I didn’t drive a stick until I was 19 for a delivery job but it was trial by fire at that point. I had to drive a stick to work my shift. I drove one later, 25-32. It was fine, I don’t miss stop and go traffic with a stick shift.
- eric_h 4y ago> I don’t miss stop and go traffic with a stick shift. I wanted in my heart of hearts to get a manual version of my car (a mini) but i talked myself out of it after getting stuck in a traffic jam for 2 hours in a rental. The automatic still has paddle shifters so you can kind of drive it like a manual.
- kqr 4y agoI like stop and go with manual, any time it's not a strong uphill. Somehow I find it easier to go in and out of neutral, as well as going directly to second, with the stick. I guess it technically should be possible with an automatic too, though.
- EamonnMR 4y agoIs there any value in learning how to use the electronic manual override option some automatics have?
- postalrat 4y agoI assume those are there only for fun. Not much different than driving a manual transmission these days.
- mpyne 4y agoI have found it useful for driving in hill country (to avoid having to ride the brakes downhill) but beyond that I'm not sure there's much practical benefit. I used to think you could downshift to buy you more time to coast to a stop without having to touch the brake and save some gas, but I think even using the brakes is enough to get a modern car to cutoff fuel flow.
- somerandomqaguy 4y agoIf you're getting into motorcycling, it's not a bad way to start practicing with it since the electronic override is often like most motorcycle's sequential gear shift.
- SoftTalker 4y agoI sometimes use it in town because modern automatics want to upshift very aggresively to maximize fuel economy. That means the engine is almost lugging most of the time, which isn't really good for it. So I'll use the manual mode to keep the car in a gear that results in a slightly higher engine RPM. It's not like a real manual though, there's no tactile feedback to changing gears or knowing what gear you're in by the position of the shifter, so I don't use it all the time.
- deepspace 4y agoI use it exclusively to downshift when I need more power, quickly. It allows me to drive in ECO mode to save gas, while avoiding sluggish downshifts by doing it manually.
- toomanybeersies 4y ago
- naijaboiler 4y agoIf you're going to teach your spouse how to drive a stick shift, just go ahead and have a marriage therapist on speed dial Don't teach family members stick shift. Save yourself the headache, and point them to driving school.
- therouwboat 4y agoI agree, my aunt got old very cheap car for me and my cousin to learn how to drive, we had one 30 minute session of yelling and I never drove it again.
- mnw21cam 4y agoI cycled a lot before I learnt to drive. The concept of gears was very firmly in my head by then - all I had to do was learn to good clutch control. If a wrong gear means you are pedalling too fast or too slow, you get the idea very quickly.
- hef19898 4y agoThis whole stick shift thing is funny, whole generations learned driving stick in Europe from day 1. Up to the point where using an automatic feels strange for the first couple of kilometers.
- chunkyguy 4y agoNot just Europe, anywhere in the world that isn't US
- RickJWagner 4y agoI love to drive manual transmissions, and taught my kids how to drive them. My last stick car (I'm between cars right now) was a WRX STi. I was teaching my son how to drive it when he made an unfortunate 3rd-gear-to-2nd (while looking for 4th). It was quite an experience. Luckily, no damage done to car or people. Just a great story for telling later.
- bsagdiyev 4y agoLucky it was a story and not a money shift!
- ddingus 4y agoYou just expressed how I did car competency with my kids. The best was snow! Tip for parents who are teaching snow driving in a front wheel drive vehicle: get the car moving and set the emergency brake. The rear tires will lock and the rear end will be all over the place. Pick a wide road with a forgiving shoulder. They will have to counter steer and keep the front of the car under control. Later, trigger a slide with that brake (assuming your car has one you can use that way) and watch them handle it like a champ! We had a good time frankly. Drove an older, manual car. Minor damage was not a big deal. Made the whole experience nice, reasonably relaxed, fun.