How do you drive a manual. Do you have to let go of the pedal and then shift, then pedal? Is this the same with braking? Is it harder to brake than accelerate?

 

You should have a friend or family member show you.
First you depress the clutch, then put it in 1st gear. Next you slowly release the clutch while you give it some gas. As the car begins to move, you release the clutch and give more gas. You'll get a feel for it the more you try it. To shift into second and beyond, you do the same only it will be easier because you are already moving.
Breaking is no problem unless you are down shifting. To downshift you do the same as up shifting except you don't give it gas and you go down the gears. While you do this, you may or may not break.
Starting out from a standstill is probably the toughest part to driving a manual. And being on an incline at a stop light with a car behind you is probably toughest yet. Once you master it though, it'll all be easy.

 

You can't learn how to drive stick from reading about it on the internet. Take a few hours of driving lessons on a manual tranny car from someone who knows how to teach.

 

I never drove a MT car before my S and after a few weeks with it, I can drive pretty normal with it. I've even got the incline start down now. I haven't taken on extreme inclines yet but that is when the e-brake comes in handy. The S has very precise gates and I am still resolving the 1-2 shift but it is getting gradually better. You need a good tempo to have a smooth 1-2 transition. Every other gear is fine. I'll continue to practice and smoothen it out more before I try rev matching and downshifting. It is really fun when you get the hang of it.

With a skilled driver, the car becomes an extention of your hand when everything synthesize together. I have so much more respect for race car drivers now, well maybe not the F1 guys since the top team are running computer automatic shifting.

Get a friend to take you out in their MT and learn. I would learn on a Japanese car since the European cars are a handful to learn MT on. I tried to learn on a Jetta and stalled like crazy so I made the mistake of getting my previous car which was an auto. Practice practice pratice and you'll get it. However, you need the right technique too or you'll just be wasting your time and causing excess wear to the drive train.

 

i think teaching how to drive a stick by words alone is like teaching you how to drive by words alone ...

it's not hard to describle but you still won't know how to do it ...

the best thing is to get someone to show up and let you practice

its not hard, just practice practice practice ...

good luck and have fun~

 

Thanks guys. I'll get my permit in one year. Don't I have to drive with someone 21 yrs or older if I only have a permit?

 

Probably. Every state is different.

I learned to drive a manual tranny in about 2 hours. My method sounds dumb, but I found it effective. Once you know the basic operation (it's really quite logical), go in your driveway (if it's fairly long and flat, otherwise an empty parking lot works well), and practice starting out: From a stop, go forward up to about 10 mph, stop completely, back up to where you started, stop, go forward, repeat. When starting is a smooth process that you can do without concentrating on, you're good to go. Starting is the only hard part, 1-2, 2-3, etc are very easy because the momentum of the car and the synchros in the transmission basically guarantee you'll end up in gear - although it may not be pretty

Good luck...

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by WestSideBilly
[B]

Probably.

 

Can you brake from 100 mph to 0 mph just by stepping on the brake pedal? And when you stop, can you change it the gear to 1st that time? Or does this damage your car?

 

Certainly!
never use the tranny to slow your car down!

It helps for the tranny, when you come to a stop, to downshift through the gears when your clutch is in.

Example, if you cruise from 60MPH-stop and you were in six gear, at the stopping point, quickly go through 6/5/4/3/2/1 gears while the clutch is depressed.
It helps the syncros slow down.