New Manual transmission drivers Q&A

[aethelwulf]

Originally Posted by E92M3Guy

Hill + tight parking spot = hand brake. No footwork will be fast enough to avoid rolling into the car behind you, or "jumping" into the car in front of you.

I didn't say there aren't situations where it's needed, but I've never been in that situation. Most of the time for most people, though, it isn't needed.

Originally Posted by aznkukuboi

Yea, 1st to 2nd gear is horrible on almost every car in the world. It's always knotchy and jerky. The revs will tend to drop more, so take this shift slower.

I've never had a problem with it, since I learned to drive stick. It was a little tough in my XR4Ti, but that's the only car I've ever had a problem with it.

[garsh0p]

Question!

So I'm pretty decent at starting on hills now with the handbrake, and I'm fairly comfortable in traffic, but what about traffic on a hill? Is using the handbrake too cumbersome while in traffic on a hill?

[Black Tire]

Originally Posted by garsh0p

Question!

So I'm pretty decent at starting on hills now with the handbrake, and I'm fairly comfortable in traffic, but what about traffic on a hill? Is using the handbrake too cumbersome while in traffic on a hill?

Nope. Stop the car with the foot brake on the hill. Pull the handbrake and slowly release the foot brake to make sure the handbrake is holding. Add some gas, slowly let out the clutch while at the same time releasing the hand break. Hold in the button on the handbrake during this procedure.

If you are at a stoplight, you can do the first few steps of this procedure and just let the handbrake hold the car. When the light is about to change, pull the handbrake up slightly and push it the button with your feet ready on the clutch and the gas.

Shifting from 1st to 2nd has some problems on this car, especially when driven from a cold start. See this thread:

http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8437

Note: The handbrake uses a drum brake and separate pads inside the normal disk on the rear wheels of the car, not the normal calipers and disks that are engaged while using the foot brake.

[Chillz]

One thing I dislike about the handbrake method is the fact that the daylight running lights shut off when you lift the hand brake and turn back on when you drop it. The person in front of you might think you are flashing your lights at them.

[thorlius]

Try driving the 6MT in the Genesis coupe 2.0T. Throttle response is awful in that car, and the clutch is brutal. Maybe turbo lag has something to do with it, too, but coming from my C6, I couldn't manage it. Stalled twice on a test drive. Also doesn't help that reverse is stupidly beside 1st, and nothing prevents you from accidentally dropping it into R when you're looking for 1st (no pull-up ring on the shifter like on the FR-S).

The FR-S on the other hand was a piece of cake. Smoothest clutch and shifting I've ever felt.

To address the 1st to 2nd lurching thing, in city traffic I'll just go 1st gear up higher into the rev range, then skip to third or fourth, letting the clutch out as the RPMs drop down roughly where they need to be. Essentially get up to speed in first, then shift into a coasting gear. Since you're done accelerating at this point, it's much smoother, and is far less shifting. Less staggered acceleration pissing off the people behind you, too (like in the country when you're stuck behind an 18-wheeler and counting his gear shifts). You shouldn't need to use every gear in the city all the time.

First gear redlines at around 55km/h in the car IIRC, so you might go 1st for a bit (no need to redline it), 3rd for a bit more, then maintain in 4th/5th. This being said, I don't own the car yet, so I'm not too familiar with the ratios, but I imagine 4th is good for cruising in most city streets on it since it's such a high revving car. (With the C6's gearing, 4th and 5th are good city gears, but 6th is only usable at 100km/h or more - 1200rpm at 100 or 2000rpm at ~150 which is insanely low.)

[Heero]

Originally Posted by thorlius

Try driving the 6MT in the Genesis coupe 2.0T. Throttle response is awful in that car, and the clutch is brutal. Maybe turbo lag has something to do with it, too, but coming from my C6, I couldn't manage it. Stalled twice on a test drive. Also doesn't help that reverse is stupidly beside 1st, and nothing prevents you from accidentally dropping it into R when you're looking for 1st (no pull-up ring on the shifter like on the FR-S).

The FR-S on the other hand was a piece of cake. Smoothest clutch and shifting I've ever felt.

To address the 1st to 2nd lurching thing, in city traffic I'll just go 1st gear up higher into the rev range, then skip to third or fourth, letting the clutch out as the RPMs drop down roughly where they need to be. Essentially get up to speed in first, then shift into a coasting gear. Since you're done accelerating at this point, it's much smoother, and is far less shifting. Less staggered acceleration pissing off the people behind you, too (like in the country when you're stuck behind an 18-wheeler and counting his gear shifts). You shouldn't need to use every gear in the city all the time.

First gear redlines at around 55km/h in the car IIRC, so you might go 1st for a bit (no need to redline it), 3rd for a bit more, then maintain in 4th/5th. This being said, I don't own the car yet, so I'm not too familiar with the ratios, but I imagine 4th is good for cruising in most city streets on it since it's such a high revving car. (With the C6's gearing, 4th and 5th are good city gears, but 6th is only usable at 100km/h or more - 1200rpm at 100 or 2000rpm at ~150 which is insanely low.)

I'm a noob to driving MT... but my dad has plenty of experience driving truck and he told me not to skip gears on MT cars? he said it wears out synchronizes.

I duno if its true or not just throwing out what the old man told me

[thorlius]

Mechanically speaking, I don't see how it could cause damage. Then again, I'm not much of a mechanical person... I've never had any clutch or transmission problems with two MT cars, though.

Edit: The C6 actually has a feature that forces you to go from 1st to 4th (it physically locks you out of 2nd and 3rd with the stick) when you're accelerating too slow. It's a really frustrating thing on the 6MT Tremec 6060 (IIRC) that GM implemented (on Camaros, Corvettes, probably CTS-V but not sure) to do something with fuel economy numbers for EPA. Based on that, I have to imagine there's no issue doing this... if you're rev matching at all, it's shouldn't cause any more problem for the clutch. Maybe just different levels of wear and tear on the transmission, but even that seems like a stretch.

[ShoGun]

2 quick questions:

1- When on a small incline at a stop light or stopsign is it damaging to the clutch to find the engaging point and toggle (or seesaw) between clutch and gas to maintain your position?

2- Is it damaging to the car or clutch to not fully press in the clutch when changing gears? I noticed I can engage the clutch fully (all the way pressed in) and shift but when I do i get a bit of lurching when i disengage since the RPMS drop down when in the neutral transition phase.

[chulooz]

Yes, and holy shit yes.

[mike2100]

Originally Posted by ShoGun

2 quick questions:

1- When on a small incline at a stop light or stopsign is it damaging to the clutch to find the engaging point and toggle (or seesaw) between clutch and gas to maintain your position?

2- Is it damaging to the car or clutch to not fully press in the clutch when changing gears? I noticed I can engage the clutch fully (all the way pressed in) and shift but when I do i get a bit of lurching when i disengage since the RPMS drop down when in the neutral transition phase.

Find a friend who's good at it and ride with him/her.

[df.dima]

Originally Posted by garsh0p

Question!

So I'm pretty decent at starting on hills now with the handbrake, and I'm fairly comfortable in traffic, but what about traffic on a hill? Is using the handbrake too cumbersome while in traffic on a hill?

my advice as a fellow noob manual driver = practice makes perfect. use handbrake in traffic on the hill too if you have to. you got to do what you got to do, right? why do otherwise if you can not do it properly (I assume you roll, just like I do, maybe stall sometimes). I could do hill+traffic, because I got pretty good with just "hill" mode by driving into my garage which is not a pretty decent incline, daily. Now Im starting to even skip the handbrake if hill isnt too bad. It will come.

[ShoGun]

Originally Posted by chulooz

Yes, and holy shit yes.

with #2 I guess I was trying to ask if you should press down the clutch all the way to the floor each time you are shifting gears or can you just push it down till you feel it disengage then shift?

[Foobar]

Originally Posted by ShoGun

2 quick questions:

1- When on a small incline at a stop light or stopsign is it damaging to the clutch to find the engaging point and toggle (or seesaw) between clutch and gas to maintain your position?

2- Is it damaging to the car or clutch to not fully press in the clutch when changing gears? I noticed I can engage the clutch fully (all the way pressed in) and shift but when I do i get a bit of lurching when i disengage since the RPMS drop down when in the neutral transition phase.

1 - you will burn your clutch out. The proper way to handle that situation is to juggle gas/clutch/parking brake such that you keep the vehicle from rolling back down the hill with the parking brake as you balance the clutch/gas enough to get forward motion, then ease off the parking brake. And just like with drifting, you always keep the brake button depressed while you're doing this (you don't want to lock, obviously).

2 - If you know where your clutch engagement point is, then no - it's not necessary to push all the way down. In fact, our cars have a pretty high engagement point which alot of us have complained about. There's a good DIY guide on how to adjust this though. I haven't decided if I'm going to do that or just get used to it.

[cgrey]

Originally Posted by ShoGun

2 quick questions:

1- When on a small incline at a stop light or stopsign is it damaging to the clutch to find the engaging point and toggle (or seesaw) between clutch and gas to maintain your position?

To maintain position while waiting for the light? Yes, that's bad.

To transition from brake pedal to gas pedal for forward motion? No, it won't damage anything. It's the proper method. The parking brake is not.