Driving Stick Shift

[Chef Matt]

Re: Driving Stick Shift

Don't worry, if my 16yr old daughter can get it down you will too. It took her a long time to figure first gear out. It's all about feel. Feeling the car inch forward when you let the clutch out then giving gas.

Both of my cars are sticks. My wife drives one and I drive a little saturn as I commute 50-60 miles a day. Saves huge on gas mileage for us. Also maintenance. I just got my saturn from the shop yesterday as I had linkage problem with my gear shift. $160.00 out the door.

[marshallfever]

Re: Driving Stick Shift

Another thing, how long does it take to usually shift, i feel like i'm doing it a bit slow here. When the car is off, i play with the knob and move it straight from 1st to 2nd with ease and going right through neutral. Yet when i'm actually driving, i feel like I take a little long to shift. I feel like a spend a good quick nano second in neutral before going to 2nd instead of a straight shift.

I guess i just have to keep driving and get used to shifting sort of fast which will great help my 1st to 2nd gear shift right?

[Blzer]

Re: Driving Stick Shift

I guess if you really try, you can do it uber quickly. I maybe take a quarter of a second on average. I don't know, how quickly do I do it in my video? I know you can't see the stick there, but you can probably see by the needle how quickly I'm doing it.

[marshallfever]

Re: Driving Stick Shift

For the first time yet, i had my friend whose been driving stick for 5 years now drive my car and get the feel of it. He taught me a couple things, well exactly what you guys have been mentioning here.

Like Blzer, he down-shifts a lot from neutral. He drives a lot in neutral for the most part. From his experience he told me my catch releases around 1000 rpm or so, once it hits slightly above that, its fine fine to completely ease off the clutch and accelerate. It was good seeing someone whose been doing it for a while right there showing me by driving my car to its potential as i was in the passenger seat.

[marshallfever]

Re: Driving Stick Shift

I drove my friends Mazda Speed 6 and it was certainly different. His car seemed a bit easier to handle in terms of the feel of the clutch. It wasn't as deep down as my clutch is. His car also didn't seem to whine when it was getting close to 3000 rpms as so.

Now i hear some of the Jetta's have turbo, i'm not sure if my car does, i didn't even know it was the 2.5 version until i opened the hood. I hear that the turbo charged ones have a whistling sound when the engine starts to rev up, maybe thats what i'm hearing when i'm in the first two gears...?

[RockinDaMike]

Re: Driving Stick Shift

From what I've read, only the 2.0 engines come with turbo and not any of the 2.5 have it. Also all turbos your year have 6 gears, not sure if you mentioned if you have 5 or 6 speed.

Yes turbos will have a whistling while the turbo spools (the air that builds up to push into your engine.) Your friends car was designed to be sport car minded so you'll typically have a shorter clutch and also shorter throw between gears also.

As for you, you shouldn't have a whistle sound on a non-turbo car. You might have a leak somewhere in one of your hoses or something else. You might want to get that checked.

[Dirtybiirdz89]

Re: Driving Stick Shift

Wish i knew how to drive one :[ my friend has one but she wont let me drive it lol she doesnt want to have to buy a new clutch

[marshallfever]

Re: Driving Stick Shift

Ok i just realized that when i shift, i push the clutch completely down. Now i tried pushing it down enough where i can shift the knob but not all the way down. Is this the "correct" way to do it? This way it feels as if since my clutch isn't all the way down, when i release it i don't have to wait long enough to start accelerating.

Any tips guys?

[Blzer]

Re: Driving Stick Shift

I tend to push down all the way I think. I don't like force it or anything, I just push down (definitely past halfway for shifting).

[Blzer]

Re: Driving Stick Shift

So, how has your stick-shift driving been going since this thread's inception?

[Blzer]

Re: Driving Stick Shift

So as I have been researching new cars (probably won't purchase a new one until the end of this year though), I found that some MT transmission vehicles have a feature called rev-matching.

I didn't know what this was, so I looked it up and wondered what it meant for cars that didn't have rev-matching. Suddenly, I was opened up to a whole new world of downshifting.

I have always mentioned (even in that old video I posted) that I would downshift but brake so that my drive train would catch up with the purported speed I should be driving, which came at the cost of overriding the clutch and also possibly even messing it up since the RPM would have to shoot up if I came off the clutch.

So I just learned that there is a technique to rev-match, and I have been using it the last week. I can't believe I never knew this was a thing. It has made for significantly smoother downshifts. I just figured that you wouldn't want to "blip" the gas pedal because that would waste gas somehow... and maybe it does, but not at a treacherous cost.

The only thing I can't really do yet is the heel-toe method so I can do it while braking. I'm going to make sure to keep practicing this on my car before I invest in a new one, which also means I kind of hope my new car won't automatically rev-match so I can stay very good at this technique. I like being more in control of my car than my car is in control of itself, if you know what I mean.

[pietasterp]

Re: Driving Stick Shift

I've driven nothing but manual transmission cars since my first car, and I've never mastered the heel-toe downshifting technique. It's probably only relevant if you're on a track, though, since in usual traffic there is plenty of time to brake, press the clutch, 'blip' the accelerator, then shift into your lower gear and release the clutch. If you need to brake any faster than that, forget about the downshift! Also, most manual transmission cars have a hard time getting the gear shifter into the lower gear if the engine RPM's aren't at least within a reasonable range for the downshift, so that's sort of a sign as well that you need to get your revs up before shoving it into 3rd or whatever.

Rev-matching is a relatively recent option for most cars, so anything before, I don't know, 2012 or thereabouts will be less likely to have the feature. I personally think it's a cool feature, but again, it's probably only relevant in a small number of cases or in a race track/closed-circuit situation.

[Blzer]

Re: Driving Stick Shift

Yeah, I mean I like downshifting while braking already, but I just thought it to be useful to not be on the clutch as much as I'm doing it so I will continue to practice the method. It appears I am working too much on an actual rotation of my foot rather than a lean of my leg. I'll keep working on it. As far as general rev-matching, I wait for a reasonable RPM in the lower gear for downshifting. I won't let the needle go back 5000 RPM for almost anything already, and I certainly won't do it for this.

I'm going to wait and see if the 2019 Honda Civic Si will feature rev-matching, but it seems they're trying to justify reasons to have it priced so differently from the Type R that they will leave out as many features from the Si as they can (including built-in navigation, LED headlights, stuff like that). Like I said though, I'd kind of like to have it not feature rev-matching. I would certainly like less rev hang, but that might be unavoidable since it's like that to control emissions more properly.

My driving habits are getting much better, though. I stated a New Year's resolution to no longer coast in neutral, and I think I have yet to do it so far. I'm now only in neutral on stops, which I think is recommended anyway.