laughs in automatic
Only thing I drive is OP’s mom wild with pleasure.
Or do as the little old lady next to me in a car park yesterday: push the accelerator until the little needle is at 6000 (because you need to get up at 6), put the car in reverse and slowly adjust your speed with the clutch.
Either Honda accords have a pretty good clutch, or she was on her 9th by the look of the car.
When I taught my brother and sis, after they got frustrated not finding the balance or the car dieing, I just told them to give it some real gas. If they’re apprehensive about it. I told them to just floor it in neutral to show nothing is gonna happen to the motor and it just hits the limiter. So after 30 minutes of them just focusing on slowly releasing the clutch while revving high, they had it down. Another 15 minutes and they were going up to 2k rpm while working the clutch.
Yes, I had to replace the clutch after teaching them both. Small price to pay for them now being able to drive anything.
That’s how learned basically, we have a lot of free way exits that leave you going uphill at a red light so that’s how I kept from rolling back into the car sniffing my exhaust
My parents insisted I learn on a manual, and while I didn’t appreciate it at the time, I do now.
The regional DMV office where I took my driving exam had the most notorious parallel parking setup in the state. It was two traffic cones next to a very large, 3 1/2 foot diameter log (representing the curb) and was on the side of a circular cul-de-sac. So not only did you have to account for the curvature, if you got too close to the “curb”, you were gonna have a very bad day lol.
If you’re wondering: I nailed it (they let you practice after hours which helped).
What does manual transmission have to do with parallel parking?
From my experience it’s a lot easier to drive slowly just woth the clutch instead of the gas pedam
Absolutely. Clutch control is super useful.
Nothing other than increasing the difficulty for a novice driver. Mostly it’s me going on a tangent and reminiscing about defeating that fucking log lol.
What’s wrong with just driving through the nearby streets and searching for a fitting spot for parking?
AFAIK, it’s mostly due to how the driving exams are structured.
First you have to pass the written exam. If you fail that, you don’t continue.
After the written exam is the parallel parking test. That’s done on-site. If you don’t pass that part, you don’t continue to the road test.
The road test is last; it’s up to the instructor where you go for that, but it usually is a route that covers various scenarios that were on the exam (4-way stops, crosswalks, speed transition zones, school zones, etc).
I’d guess it’s setup that way because of how many people fail the parallel parking test; best to do that in a controlled environment where there’s no risk to regular people’s cars out in the wild.
Edit: This probably varies state-by-state, too. I’m just describing how it was here.
If you don’t have control over the finer movements of your car, parallel park is a pretty good way to weed it out. And if they don’t, you’re gonna fuck up harder in a place that actually matters.
Fuck up when it doesn’t matter so you don’t fuck up when it matters.
Lol volkswagen autostart Slows down for speed bump. Engine turns off.
Autostart and lane assist are turned off in my car.
🤮 So glad my stop-start has been broken on my Hyundai for years now, everything else works though
Wait this happens?? Lmao
Yeah. Know problem in my polo. Have to turn stopstart each time you start the car
You don’t have to drive stick…
Man y’all might as well be speaking Greek in this thread.
I enjoy driving, so I drive a manual. People who don’t enjoy driving, or who merely drive because there’s no other alternative, should not drive a manual.
That being said, nobody should drive a tesla.
I love driving but I will not drive a manual unless there’s no other alternative, it’s 2025 I shouldn’t have to be doing that for my car
I don’t like my car doing anything I didn’t explicitly tell it to, or not doing what I do he’ll it to, like not downshifting when it’s time to downshift.
Exactly. I hate those little gear shift recomendations. Fuck off I will shoft to 5th when I want to and not when you say because your dumb ass cannot see the hill we are about to ascend in 200m.
Ahh but its so worth it. Also just take the bus lol, driving should only be for fun. Make all fuel eco and its gonna be more expensive but cars as a form of transport are horrible. I like driving but i also like swimming and that doesnt mean i want to swim to school/work.
It’s not just the clutch. Rev up the engine too.
Now you killed it while lurching forward! Exciting!
While learning, don’t touch the gas. Learn how to take the car out of neutral and into first using only the clutch. Then the whole process makes a lot more sense for when you need to do it faster.
No, you didn’t “kill it”, you gave it what it needs and then released the clutch. Slowly letting go till it bites doesn’t make any sense, especially when going uphill. The clutch can take moving a tiny bit faster, the engine cannot take it moving a lot slower. If you lurch, you gave it a ton of gas, instead of keeping it at like 3k range max.
Basically, train on a level surface. Push in the clutch fully, break fully. Then let go of break, and push the gas in slightly. Learn how far you need to push it to keep it at 3k or so, depending on your vehicle. Then, the most important part. Gas doesn’t make your vehicle go, the release of the clutch does. Once you figure out that it’s the left leg that makes it “go” instead of the right, you’ll get it every time, uphill or not. It only needs the tiny amount of initial gas to be good.
None of this "wait till the cars starts rolling and then you have a quarter of a milisecond to add gas before it dies on you.
The “don’t touch the gas” thing is mostly just a learning exercise for people brand-new to driving stick to get a feel for where their clutch bites and how it slips, it’s not the way to start a car rolling, certainly not on hills. Though anecdotally, I’ve driven at least a dozen manual transmission cars and trucks and only one lacked the torque to start and roll just idling - because we found out later that its timing jumped a tooth. So this line
None of this "wait till the cars starts rolling and then you have a quarter of a milisecond to add gas before it dies on you.
makes me suspect that there’s something up with your car? Even if it can’t start from idle, any car should be able roll in idle
Just get an automatic transmission instead. That might be my American perspective showing though. I know manual transmissions are more common in Europe (or at least I’ve heard), but I don’t know if that’s just driver preference or for some other reason (like cost).
In France they’re only starting to get traction. They just weren’t a thing until say ten or fifteen years ago. Top of the line cars had the option, but it was very rare. It’s a matter of culture. We have an automatic now (wife is more comfortable with it), it handles gear changes shittily but it appeases my left leg, so we’re even.
Automatics had a bit of a bad reputation, for quite a while. They don’t/didn’t play well with our road layouts. E.g. they could be slow to downshift when climbing a hill, and kick when they did decide to play along. I believe they have improved a lot, but most people are used to manuals, and so more manuals are sold. This makes automatics more expensive and rarer.
I will say when I rented a car in Wales in the mid 2010s they had like literally 2 automatics and they were double the rate. It wasn’t at all common there then.
Heard the manual vs automatic argument million times. I learned to drive using manual, my first few cars were all manuals and this is all I knew for a long time.
When we bought our first car together with my wife we got an automatic. She is a less confident driver, and wanted an automatic car. I dont mind it at all, got used to it and now I don’t miss manual at all. She is a much safer driver, under stress or in a sticky situation the manual transmission is a an extra thing to worry about and I feel calmer knowing that she can fully concentrate on the road instead of shifting.
I think manual is great for experienced drivers, but automatic is so much safer for beginners and people like my wife.
i had a manual mustang cobra a long time ago and dealing with the clutch in stop and go traffic could get exhausting. my leg would actually start getting tired after a while.
I also learned on manual in Europe and switched to automatic when I moved to the US because it’s the only option.
i like driving while being able to rest one arm out the window, or sip from a drink or something.
If I need to quickly accelerate out of a busy turning I put it into Sport mode and turn Eco Mode off
I always hated this instruction. When instead I had it explained that one can think of it as fading the clutch out and fading the accelerator in (and that points in between are fine too) I immediately understood and never had an issue again. Admittedly I stalled a few times when switching to a different car whilst I learned its specific tolerances, but conceptually I was golden.
…now I drive an electric car.
Really depends on the amount of torque your car has at idle, in some you don’t need to touch the gas pedal at all to set off.
Or how good the anti-stall system is, the car I learned in was basically impossible to stall by letting the clutch up too fast, it would just automatically fade in power.
Also it’s never taught that you should lift the clutch to the bite point and keep it still until the car builds up some momentum. I think people do it so subconsciously that it doesn’t occur to them that that’s the key to moving from a standstill.
I love teaching my friends how to drive stick. The first lesson is how to make the idle car move by lifting the clutch foot so slow that you can feel the car move and keep going slowly until the foot is off the clutch pedal. It’s about a 15 minute lesson and the driver understands what to do with the clutch. The gas is easy.
In their own car right? That’ll kill the clutch after a few friends. It’s entirely possible to do, but thats hella unhealthy wear on the clutch. The parking lot must just reek when you’re done.
It’s slow, but in most cars the idle is torquey enough that it’s not that slow. My beater doesn’t even have 1st gear anymore, so I start in second, and I can still go from a full stop to clutch fully released and rolling in like 4 seconds (if that) without touching the gas at all.
I feel like this is something that you just have to do to learn though. You can’t smoothly and competently operate the clutch without understanding the bite-point, and for a noob it’s going to be really tough to get a feel for that bite-point if they aren’t taking it very slow at first. Speed will come, usually after only a few starts
It’s also nicer to pedestrians and other drivers if the car isn’t sporadically revving or lurching.
Exactly! In city driving or parking lots when I’m just creeping around I literally don’t touch the gas at all sometimes
Nope. I teach them in my car. And yeah, the car might sometimes stutter but that doesn’t hurt anything. It’s hard to harm to a clutch without using the gas pedal or a graded street.
On principle I only teach in their car, but made an exception for my friend’s husband since he wanted to rent a manual overseas. I learned my lesson, he didn’t
You aren’t having them redline the engine and slip the clutch going up a hill. Practicing idle starts in first is probably way less wear than a single sporty start on a highway on ramp.
It depends on the car, my first car used gasoline, so the idle torque was low and you really needed to push the gas at the same time, otherwise it would stall, maybe not if you are releasing the clutch extremely slow, but that is not practical.
My current diesel car has so much torque even at idle that you really don’t need to press the gas pedal while releasing the clutch.
This wasn’t taught to me either but this is the best thing for teaching others. I’ve explained this to a few people before that were struggling to learn and it made the process much easier.
It’s like learning to ride a bike. There’s all this balance going on, but after you’re good at it it’s just natural and you kind of forget how to explain what to do because you stopped thinking about it so long ago.
I was taught that. I learned driving in Germany, though.
Just get an automatic
laughs in electric drivetrain
Voltage up.
Voltage down.
Simple. No additional headache.
3 phase synchronous motors want a word with you!
