I would give my left leg...
 

Funny little story for those of us that drive sticks...

When I was in college I had a roommate ask he could borrow my car. I told him, "Sure, but it's a stick." He said, "Damn, I would give my left leg to know how do drive a stick!"... and he was serious!

I always liked having a stick shift because seemingly few people know how to drive one, so people are less likely to borrow it.

One of my most proud achievements: Teaching my wife how to drive stick. Bonus achievement: Getting her to embrace and participate in hypermiling and loathe driving automatics! :thumbup:

Maybe I'm missing the joke, but he wouldn't be able to work the clutch without his left leg, or is that the joke??

How much is a sense of humor on ebay?

An awful lot. Like an arm and a leg, I think.

badump bump.

thatguitarguy -

I think it's a "nonsense joke". Kind of like cutting the branch off a tree that you are sitting on.

I have a similar joke that I made up. Instead of saying "crazy like a fox", I say CRAZY LIKE A BOX!!!!!!

Can you figure it out?

CarloSW2

uuhhhh, no. I guess I better click on "Buy It Now"

When i first got my car, i didn't know how to drive a manual. When i deployed to Al Asad, Iraq in 2007 i had duty to drive guys to work, the dining hall, and the "cans" a few times a week. All they had there were standard buses, so that's how i learned...poor bus. I like my car being auto but sometimes i do wish it was a manual though.

thatguitarguy -

Not many people do. It's designed to promote consternation and squiggly foreheads of angst. Crazy like a Fox means savvy. Crazy like a Box is a nonsense phrase, which is crazy, so it means Crazy like a .... well, just crazy.

For best effect, wait for someone to say "that's just crazy". Before anyone else says anything, interrupt the conversation with a louder-than-normal grating voice, wild looking eyes, and slight frothing at the mouth. If the conversation comes to a dead stop and people look at you funny, you have succeeded.

mrmee, mrmee, mrmee, mrmee ...

CarloSW2

I wish my car had the fun and MPG of the manual, and the ease of the auto.

In traffic, I want an auto sooo bad.

OOOHHHKKKAAAYYYY...

Maybe it's not me. Maybe you ought to put "Sense of Humor" on your Christmas list and give people the link to "Buy It Now".

(thatguitarguy heads for the door and backs quietly out of the room:eek::D)

There's automated manual and CVT. And don't forget EVs...

Lol that was good!

I hate driving automatics. Funny story about that.... my fiance used to ONLY drive automatics. I told her "You have SO much more control in your car and you'll feel more in tune with it by learning to drive a stick." she told me i was crazy and she would NEVER ever drive a stickshift if it was the last thing she ever did and she had to die going to the hospital.

Well, her little crappy eagle summit died on her one day. So i fixed it.

It broke down again.

I fixed it.

It broke down....... again. So i said "f*** this, you're driving my car till i feel like fixing this again." she freaked out and went "AHHHHH no i can't drive a stick!" so i went out and took her to a parking lot and had her craptastically shifting within an hour. Rough.... and not so great.....

1 week later.... she got excited she was matching gears properly.... and shifting crisp... and not killing the car....

Another week later..... she was excited she wasn't intimidated by hills anymore!

3 months later she finally said "you're right.... you do notice all the weird things with learning it because you can feel how it shifts and how it starts and stops. And it's even better this way in the snow!" i replied with "Oh REALLY? huh..... never knew that one..." and she gave me "ok ok....." kind of look.

So i bought a Porsche 944 and gave her my car and sold the Eagle. She got excited. So in teaching my fiance to drive a stick I successfully:

- got her to feel confident in driving a stick
- got my point across
- got rid of that horrible POS car
- got a MUCH more reliable car for her
- got a Porsche out of the deal

SCORE!


..... if you want entertainment though (since my story isn't horribly funny) go to a vacant parking lot with someone who drives stick but doesn't watch any rally racing.... and tell them that left foot braking is better in parking lots for gas mileage. When they ask what that is, you just tell them to use their left foot to brake so they can use their right foot for gas. Watch in hilarity as they mash it "lightly" and just about throw themselves into the wheel and go "You're an ASS!" as you laugh. Granted it IS a real technique to use in rally and things like that, it always cracks me up.... did that to my sister once and i thought she was gonna punch me in the face.

LOL, I think the phrase you are looking for is "ECO FAIL" :)

Yes yes yes.... i know.... I think we've gone over this in another said thread :)

i'm aware it doesn't get great mileage (and that many people hate it) but i have been using the ecomodder driving techniques to try and get the best possible mileage out of it. I love my car though, and that's all that matters to me :)

http://www.masonicinfo.com/images/BeatDeadHorse.gif

My fiance on the other hand is getting the wonderful 30s and 40s gas mileage in that ZX2. I'm okay with that since she commutes farther than me.

I sold my metro to a young woman who didn't know stick, she had no problem picking it up from what I hear.

Yeah, true, some people are naturals at it. Others are horrible at it. I think the largest thing is intimidation factor. Granted yeah there's more to multitask, but it's not that bad.

I still am a firm believer that you should learn to drive a stick no matter what if you hold a license, since you never know if you'll ever be in a circumstance where an emergency may come up and you have no choice!

Everyone in my family can drive stick. My mom used to let me shift the gears from the passenger seat when I was a kid, while she did the clutch, traffic permitting of course.

Just yesterday flying around in the greasy snow. I am hills all around, bangor is ...almost san franciscan like that.

Flew around a corner, pretending rally driver as normal :thumbup:
...and realized, it did not matter how big the brakes are nor the tires.... 4lo and jake braking down the slope in 1st was the win...still sliding, but very controllable. Some autos could do this, but today, not many.

A friend says my Insight feels more well-planted in the snow than my Subaru did. Hah! No, it's just that I can no longer drift around corners, now that I have FWD. Meaning the Insight is probably a safer winter car than the Subaru.

Even if that was the joke, I have already been aware of people operating a clutch without using the left leg :D

A quick search on YouTube is going to lead you to many videos showing disabled drivers in cars fitted with manual transmission all around the 3rd-world, including my homeland Brazil.

I used to have a neighbor who had his left leg weakened due to polio, and he once told me he had a local derivative of the Hillman Avenger with the manual transmission. I'm just not sure if it had the clutch adapted to operate manually or turned into a servo-operated automatic clutch. And some 7 or 8 years ago I saw a VW Kombi from the '70s with a hand lever to operate the clutch, since its driver had his left leg amputated.

Slow night on the forum, rooster?

That's what brought me here.

I learned in a 1964 Ford Econoline. I6-240 if memory serves, and a bolt action transmission. No power assist anything. Really worn. Near bald bias plies. Man it was fun. Straight axles and the motor between the seats.

Today it's a brand new 19,000-lb Kenworth with an I6. But the baby motor. An ISX12 that really pulls. 18-speed Roadranger.

And a stainless double conical tank with 47,000-lbs of sloshing product as there are no baffles. 5k gallons in a 7k tank (don't ask me why).

Trick is to never wake up that monster.

I'm shifting to tenth as I reach 15-mph, ha!

After that (and it's no joke) my four ton pickup is a Formula One racer.

And I know I'm damned tired heading home if I find myself floating the gears in the Dodge (whereupon I wake up and really graunch it).

There are now single fleets with thousands of big trucks and nary a manual to be found. Men with 8-9 years driving experience and can't drive a manual. Wow!

.

It actually doesn't surprise me, but anyway, in my country the manuals still outnumber the automatics and AMTs on trucks. Difference is that American big rigs usually relied on non-synchronized transmissions, while the European-designed counterparts turned to fully-synchronized transmissions which are easier for an average Joe to learn how to shift. On the other hand, it became more common to see buses and coaches with automatic transmission here, which was quite unpopular due to the higher price but now are favored by some operators due to their longer lasting under heavy loads and better performance on hilly terrain.

Some of the "automatic" trucks (several types of approaches mechanically) are really well-sorted. The 12-speed Volvo for instance. A man of my acquaintance with 3-million miles with his current employer (and several more besides) allowed me to quote him that the only way they'd get him out of that Volvo was to put him in a newer one.

That said, there are still some very bad auto trucks out there. So slow that even bobtail trying to left turn across a six lane road is treacherous.

Buses have been automatic here since the 1970s. Earlier in some instances.

IIRC the Volvo uses an AMT. Many drivers here praise it too.


There were some prototype buses with automatic transmission here in the 70s, but it took longer to become widespread. Nowadays it's a mandatory equipment for articulated buses in Brazil, but not for other types of bus for which it's still optional.

I drove for Stagecoach, here in the UK, and virtually all of our fleet of buses and coaches were automatic. The only ones with manual transmission were old hacks. Small buses that had come into the fleet from acquisitions of other companies. Everything from the small local buses, through the coaches, to the double deckers, which are used a great deal here.
I loved driving them, and in city traffic there is nothing to beat an automatic transmission, especially when there is nothing further from your mind than the fuel costs!

https://photos.smugmug.com/STAGECOAC...10-2011-X2.jpg

http://www.photo-transport.co.uk/bus...ch-sp61cxb.jpg

http://www.alexander-dennis.com/wp-c...00-resized.jpg

Front-engined buses are still prevalent here in Brazil due to the lower investment, and so is the manual transmission, even in city buses. Coaches on the other hand are now getting automated-manual transmissions such as the i-Shift and Opticruise more frequently. About 10 years ago in a trip from Florianópolis to Porto Alegre, the coach driver told me he could go nearly the entire trip without touching the pedals, relying on the cruise control and the brake-retarder. Volkswagen offers front-engined bus frames fitted with an AMT but I haven't seen too many of them, even though they would not be so much more expensive compared to a regular manual and also easier for the maintenance crews to learn how to service them compared to an automatic, returning better fuel efficiency and reducing driver fatigue especially on hilly terrain and narrow streets. Once going from downtown Florianópolis to the apartment where my mom currently lives, I managed to count how many times the bus driver shifted gears, and could count more than 120 shifts.

All our buses and coaches have the engine and transmission in the rear. The buses don't have retarders though some of the coaches do.

The rear-engine layout became more popular on coaches due to the pass-through luggage compartments, which also increase the overall load capacity. What does surprise me is the absence of transverse-engined buses or coaches, considering this layout would increase the volume available for luggage compartments or fuel tanks on a coach and the low-floor extension on some urban transit buses.

Our buses all have transverse engines and transmissions, mounted immediately behind the rear seat.

http://ecomodder.com/forum/attachmen...1&d=1502088164

What does surprise me is the absence of flathead flat twelves

http://ecomodder.com/forum/member-fr...icle38to39.jpg

When it comes to gassers, I am quite favorable to flatheads. Since they're usually more suitable to lower revving, and therefore can be optimized for low-end torque, might eventually also require fewer downshifts than a smaller-displacement and much more rev-happy OHV or OHC would :D