learning (teaching) to drive a manual transmission...
 

Sorry if this is not the right area for this but I had a question about teaching someone to drive a stick. If its not the right area maybe a moderator can move it?

I learned on an old grain truck on the farm when I was about 10, dad threw me the keys and told me to ride my bike back to the barn and get the grain truck...well...never driven it before, after a few times of killing it and revving the crap out of it, sitting on the edge of the seat to operate the pedals and looking through the steering wheel, I got it there and the next time got easier and easier...but that was on like a 55 model chevy who knows what with a granny gear that I found out later that you could if you where gentle with her take off without giving her any gas...but it taught me...

Anyhow my 15 yr old wants to learn to drive a stick now for a couple of reasons,
1) Because he is the only one in his group of friends that would know how.
2) He really wants an S-10 or S15 pickup when its time to get him a car.
3) His older brother doesn't know how and he wants to show off.
4) Dad (me) thinks he should know how.

The only stick I have is my contour and I did take him out once and he had a few good take offs but I then started smelling the clutch so I stopped him and took over. Just didn't want to burn the clutch up on my daily driver.

Anyone have an easy way or any ideas on HOW to teach a kid to drive a stick without burning the clutch up too much? I have never burnt a clutch up but like I said I basically had an easy truck to learn on with the granny gear.

Taking off is probably the worst part of teaching someone to drive stick, but (wasteful as it sounds) the best way I've ever been able to get anyone to learn is to teach them to hold the engine at ~2k and then "feel" where the clutch starts to grab. Once the car starts moving, it's best to just let the clutch the rest of the way out to prevent burning.

So called "dumping" the clutch won't damage anything but your ears when the tires squeal a little bit, and will usually surprise the hell out of the new driver.

Later, as the driver gets used to the operation and "feel" of the pedals, you drop the RPM down to about 1500 holding and taking off (on flats). Don't go all out and put them on a hill for the first time. Stalling can be very discouraging, and an already inexperienced driver may be completely turned off to the whole idea after a day of getting "nowhere".

The one thing that my car does not have is a RPM gauge. That would be easier if it had one. Its actually my first manual that I have owned that didn't have one.

toss him the keys... lol.

my first car was manual... maybe find the hugest parking lot ever. at first don't let him stop and go over and over, but let him drive slow and up shift and down shift between 1st and 2nd gear... maybe 3rd?

once that's perfected, maybe he'd be smoother at taking off from a dead stop?

Without a tach, it's a little harder, but you have the ear for the car as it is, so you tell him where to set the pedal, then teach him to identify the appropriate speed to shift by the sound of the car, NOT the speedometer.

Shifting by the speedometer leaves you SOL if just about anything happens where you can't use/see the speedo, and doesn't teach the driver anything about the car at all. Driving manuals is preferred by my immediate family because you have to be in sync with the car to be doing it correctly, and if you can't identify shift points by vehicle sound, you're definitely not "in sync" with your car.

you could familiarize the new driver with shifting by letting them shift left handed from the passenger seat. you clutch in, they shift, you clutch out. pretty easy to get in synch with each other that way, maybe help with a couple of the first shifts, they can go through all the gears without a word after a bit of practice under normal acceleration.

I do it all the time, poor mans automatic :) Would be one less thing to have to learn all at once.

dcb -

I did that with a friend of mine once... it just further confused him.

I don't recall being confused by it myself, YMMV of course. Was it the shifting with someone else clutching or the switching hands that was troublesome?

Switching hands. He associated left and right instead of associating the shift pattern with the car, so he first tried starting in 5th, then tried shifting from 2nd into reverse (VW transmission, reverse is up and left)

I taught my daughter to drive a stick shift in the snow, in the winter, in Alaska, when she was 12. Taught my son, stepdaughter, and granddaughter, too. I just told the latter three not to give it any gas at all. They learned to use the clutch to get rolling without killing the engine, and didn't have to worry about barking the tires.

I've taught a number of people to drive stick, each one took about an hour before they were master of the hill start.
First thing I did was find a high school parking lot and have them learn the clutch, no gas, just the clutch, they will stall the vehicle about 10-15 times and you need to tell them this, that they will stall the vehicle but it's part of learning how it feels to feather the clutch, after the new driver is good with the clutch then and ONLY then let them use the gas with the clutch, learning both at the same time can take hours, learning one then the other goes really quick taking only minutes, once you get up to the speed where you would shift then you let them press the clutch and coast, while you are learning to shift you can take your time but if you get it stuck in their head that they have to shift while coasting it's easier to master, shifting from 1st to 2nd is the hardest.
Because they are now good at feathering the clutch they are now going to be great at the hill start, find a hill on a back road, driveway, or some other out of the way place and start out the same way as learning the clutch only this time they are using the brake as well, once the clutch starts to grab have them switch their right foot from the brake to the gas...
As I said, I've done this with a number of people who have never driven stick before and it took about an hour each before they were good at doing a hill start.

That's how I was forced to learn, except in a dirt track car with too much power and not enough weight, on a gravel hill in a quarry.

I only remember specifically getting slapped in the back of the head for spinning the owner's tires up the hill, then being told to "Doe eeet right." (He's Dutch, not sure how to emulate that accent.)

I also heard alot of "Don' Berrrn my clooch", and "tekk it teasie nao, dats alut of horts puwre."

The DiNozzo slap was fairly uncalled for, though, and certainly less than helpful.

huh, I just use the hill brake on hills. put it in first, then rev it, release clutch and hill(parking/hand) brake almost simultaneously (well, rev then clutch then brake, but it is pretty fluid).

Teach a child how to swim by teaching them how to breath properly in the water.

Teach them how to drive a stick by teaching them how to engage the clutch without touching the gas pedal.

I'm with Ryland and Sentra on this one. Let them learn in a parking lot, with no other traffic around.

regards
Mech

That wouldn't work in at least 3 of my most recent vehicles. It was absolutely necessary in one of the first ones.

In the former statement, those vehicles didn't have hand brakes (or parking brakes at all, for that matter).

The latter, that one didn't have service brakes. I stopped it (and drove over 1,000 miles) with the hand brake and downshifting, only using the brake pedal to activate the brake light switch.

It started out that I couldn't afford to fix the service brakes, so I kept driving using the e-brake until I got the parts I needed. Then, I just got lazy because I was so used to doing it that way that I could drive/slow down/stop just as safely as most people do with service brakes. I learned about "cushion distance" in this car.

I thought Rylands response was well considered too.

No comment on the missing emergency brake :)

Learn to do it the right way, then learn to do it the easy way, otherwise you will never be able to do a hill start in a truck that has a foot E-brake, or any vehicle that doesn't have a working hand brake, I only use the hand brake for hill starts when I parallel park on a hill in a tight spot, otherwise it just takes to much time and requires you to put down your coffee/cell phone/leave the radio alone.

lol, I didn't know the "right way" included juggling a cup of coffee and a cell phone :) But I have managed ok on the few trucks I've driven.

I use the handbrake a lot as part of winter driving (small fwd car) so it ain't no thing to save a tiny bit of wear on the clutch by using the handbrake to start up a hill, in my case.

As a manual transmission San Francisco driver, I will never own any MT car with a foot-operated parking/emergency brake.

I will never drive or own a vehicle that doesn't have operating service and parking brakes, either. I bought a $1700, 4X4 articulated ATV that used a band wrapped around the driveshaft as its brake, except the band was missing. We got a Moose down (this was in Alaska), and I went back for the ATV to get it up to the Moose meat. I lost traction going up the hill, and accidentally got the ATV in neutral. It started rolling backwards and built up so much speed, I had to jump out between the roll bar and the windshield before it killed me. When I picked myself up, I walked down the hill, expecting to find my rifle on the hillside, and a wrecked ATV at the bottom of the hill.

Miraculously, the ATV had gently backed itself gently sideways midway down the hill, with my undamaged rifle still in the seat. Still shaking, I drove it down and parked it at the bottom of the hill, walked back up to my buddies with the downed Moose, and declared we'd have to pack the Moose meat to the bottom of the hill. I sold the ATV 18 days after I bought it, still during Moose season, for $2500. A tidy $800 profit for 18 days of ownership. But the $%^& thing nearly killed me.

I taught my self actually in a miata (baaaaad car for tall people by the way)

shifting is the easiest thing

when taking off you're just gonna have to give up ONE clutch probably haha that takes a while to get down

Christ -

Yeah, I traumatized a cute girl trying to teach her how to drive stick in my CRX. She was fine in the parking lot, but kept stalling it on real streets. She later bought a Mazda MX3 with an automatic, :( . At least I influenced her to get an MX3, :o !

I realized after the fact that *if* I had told her to set the tach at X RPM before letting up on the clutch (egg-zactly like you have described) she probably would have "got it".

CarloSW2

Domman56 -

I used to be a clutch-rider in my Dad's VW Karmann Ghia. I went through two clutch plates in three years. The second time, the repair dude showed me that I had worn the mounting screws off the clutch, hee hee hee.

CarloSW2

Carlos -

Go through all that, then try to teach someone new to manual transmissions with an unsprung twin-plate clutch that has half a ton of clamp force. :)

That's what I stuck my wife with the first time she drove stick with me.

Zen-like
 

Tell me about it. My car doesn't have a tach and the speedo died on me this summer. I've become all Zen with driving since it happened. I'm much more aware with my driving.

Did you learn to count mile markers and other road designations to figure out your average speed yet?

I went out and measured the average distance of a few of the lines on the road back in the day, to figure out how many should pass per 10 seconds at 60MPH, 40MPH, 20 MPH, and so on.

I can't remember any of the figures anymore, I've become alot more lax in my driving than I used to be, but I don't drive illegally anymore, either.

Stripes are about 43 feet from beginning to beginning. 13 per 1/10th mile. Passing 2 per second gives you very close to 55 MPH. Used them for rough speedo calibration on test drives.

regards
Mech

Is that a universally applicable (federal) rule?

I'm not doubting you, I just want to make sure that someone doesn't read it and then go out and get a speeding ticket because theirs are further apart or something.

My speedo began to fail intermittently in the summer so when it was working I matched the sound of my car, the gear and the speed I was at. When it died, I paced with my brother until we get to work (we work part time at the same place). I also go with the flow of traffic locally. On the interstate, well, it pretty much sucks for me. I search out the slowest car and pace him/her.

Fixing the speedo is on my to do list for things to fix. It seems my car decided to go on strike or something last summer and fall. Repairing her is a good way to learn and practice working on a car though!

btw- The Odometer works so I still keep track of my MPG.

markemmanuel -

It sounds like it's all under control, but can you borrow a GPS from a pal? That could replace your speedo until you get it fixed.

CarloSW2

I wouldn't swear it was universal, but you can check by pacing the distance on your local roads.

I pace about 99 per hundred yards, and that is just over 14 paces for me.

Of course you could use a tape measure to be more precise, or just count them between mile markers on roads that have them, but I wouldn't do it while driving, you might hypnotize yourself ;).

regards
Mech

He does know how to drive, he's got his permit and has actually been driving for 2 years now, just automatics. I will have to try the clutch control in a parking lot. I will also have to try and see if my car will take off without pressing gas at all, I don't think it will but it will still be a good exercise for him, I even kill it sometimes when I'm goofing around and not paying attention and dont give it enough gas for take off. I think if he can just get the take off under control he will do good with it, when he did get it to take off he was able to shift it with no problem up and down. Just taking off is where he has trouble. I cant afford to sacrafice a clutch at this time. I have only replaced one clutch plate in any of my vehicles and I rack that up to pulling a trailer that I knew was too big for the s-10 too many times and having to slip the clutch to take off while pullin git. It also have 100,000 mile son it when I bought it.

It will.

All cars will, if you have the patience and the skill.

For six years, I was an instructor at several racing schools, and one of the first things I taught--even to very experienced drivers--was being able to start the car from a stop using only the clutch. I've driven (literally) hundreds of cars, everything from econoboxes to full-blown racecars with >800hp and have never found a single one that couldn't be started from a dead stop using the clutch only--no throttle.

Here's a tip:
Let the clutch out using your ankle, not your leg. Push the clutch all the way in, point your toe, plant your heel, and then start letting the clutch come up by flexing your ankle (lift your toes toward your shin). The friction point (where the car starts to move) will be somewhere within the range of your flexing ankle. When your ankle is flexed as far as it will go (the car will be rolling by now), finish letting the clutch out by sliding your heel back toward you.

Some people will find this difficult (at first), but I've not found a single person who couldn't master this in under an hour. Also, clutch wear while learning is zero.

TEiN -

Yyyyyyyyup. On the flat with no one behind me I can go from 0 to 4th without ever touching the accelerator pedal.

CarloSW2

I only have a minor correction. Not all cars will do this.

AFAIK, all stock cars that are still as they came off the showroom floor and are intended for Class C operators under normal circumstances are... but that's a huge qualifier for a small statement.

Even light modifications to the engine can make it nearly impossible to do this anymore, though, as well as other factors.

It's more a function of whether the car has the power at idle to overcome the forces holding it in place than anything else, but even a lightened flywheel can make it next to impossible to take off without using the accelerator, because there is less rotational inertia for the clutch disc to absorb to move the car.

Just thought I'd add that in there.

I taught a nephew on a gravel roadway with slight downhill. I think it is probably easier on the clutch and tires since you don't need much gas to get going.

i thanked you. i'm not training anyone on stick, but that was smart :thumbup:

How is clutch wear zero when you slip it to get it moving this way?? Just curious...not tryign to be sarcastic...i know you wear the clutch disk when you take off normally by design but doesnt this put excess slippage on the plate doing it this way?

It may not be zero, but it's negligible. The soles and heels of your shoes wear away with time, but any individual step you take doesn't wear them much. Any low rpm clutch slip isn't going to wear your clutch much. Drop the clutch at 4500 rpm, or do a shift at redline, and 100 no-gas startups in a parking lot are zero by comparison.

I worked for a quality, national driver training company and taught defensive driving to new drivers for several years (part time job while going to school). This included students who wanted to learn to drive manuals.

Ryland & TEiN's advice jibes pretty well with what worked best.

Also, worth saying: some people shouldn't drive stick. It's even potentially dangerous (relative to an autobox in certain situations we can all think of) if they can't master the skills.

EG: a very few students were taught to match-rev downshift. Most couldn't get that far.

I hate being crippled by having an automatic in my car, but I had a really bad experience with my dads manual car. After almost smashing into the guy behind me (while at a stop light on a hill ), I then stalled the car enough to be a danger to other drivers.
I'd like to own a manual car, but I'm wondering how that would even work now that I am an adult that has never learned.
Once I bought the car, how the heck would I get the thing home ?