TO use the parking brake, pull it up to hold you then you can ease it off as you increase gas power, kind of like slipping the clutch, but you do nto hop all over the place.

I can only speak from personal experience of course, but it shouldn't take more than a couple of hours before you're good enough to safely drive it on the road. Hill starts are a piece of cake, and if you feel unsure whether you can do it without rolling back, just hod the car on the e-brake until you feel it pulling forward. It took me 45 minutes to get good enough at hill starts to do it without concern, as for the actual shifting, well all cars feel different, but hours training and you should have the hang of it.

Everyone messes up a change every now and then, I've never had anything but stick, and only occasionally borrow or dive an auto, and as much as it's second nature by now, I mess them up on occasion as well.

Don't be nervous, that's the best advice you can get. All our driver's ed cars when I was learning had stick shift gears. They just wanted to make sure we knew how to use gears if we ended up not owning an automatic.

Nothing to it. Just learn how the gear shift works and let out the clutch easily while putting on the gas. You should be comfortable in about a day and really a pro within a week. That means that you will be able to be on a hill in between two other cars at a stop sign or light and go with the flo.

Originally Posted by Coldjensens. Originally Posted by whiteboyslo. There used to be millions of VW beetles on the road here and we are talking about a lb vehicle with a 40 hp - 60 hp engine.

Automatics were extremely rare so almost always they were 4 speed shifts. The point is that it's pretty easy to learn to drive one and you really don't even need to worry about rolling back once you get the hang of it. On driving in Europe, this would be the last thing I would be worrying about as the obscure traffic laws, markers, ruleless traffic circles, and god help if you go into the UK where driving on the opposite side of the road adds a dimension to it that can be heart stopping if you are not used to it.

Unlike America which has a road system that a chimp can successfully handle, you are expected to know details there that can get you into trouble if you don't. This is why there are not cup holders in European cars, you really have to concentrate on not getting killed. Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum.

Sink or swim, baby. Crossed Reality wrote: Best way to become comfortable with a manual transmission. Get a sports shifter knob and use plenty of lu Use a car where it doesn't matter if you kill the clutch, or at least one where replacing it won't cost you much money, because your efforts are unlikely to contribute to a long and happy clutch servicelife.

If you happen to have access to a car maybe at a junker? Face the car uphill, and then try to hold it stationary using gas and letting the clutch slip no brakes.

It goes without saying that this will kill a clutch in no time, so you might not want to do that with your best friends' car. Come to England. Given the sort of mouth-breathing fucktards that manage to get a driving licence over here, we can teach pretty much anyone to drive a manual. It's not some form of space-sorcery from the dark ages Depress clutch, select gear, release clutch.

With modern lockouts and synchros, you'd be very hardpressed to fuck up a manual xmission or even really burn out the clutch.

Truth be told modern autos frequently pull better mileage numbers than stick. You sir, owe me a new keyboard. Mins wrote: Crossed Reality wrote: Best way to become comfortable with a manual transmission. Then I remembered the rules I'll be in my bunk. On a practical reply to OP. I learned on an Omni GLH, and was given a gravel back road with a hill. I taught my best friend how to drive stick the same way 4 years later. Lift shifter up, pull toward you 1st - lift up push way - 2nd drop down pull toward you - 3rd.

Try not to grind, please. Rent - sometimes difficult. Go to a dealer you don't like; take car for testdrive. I learned on a motorcycle. When doing it wrong can seriously f' one up, you pay more attention to detail. Once you have that down, transferring it to a car is a piece of cake. I hate driving automatic, I pay more attention to what I'm doing when I've got to shift gears, plus, if you pay attention, your brakes will last forever.

As much as that gives you the idea, I don't like it as a practice method for a car. Especially in a one-down, 6-up or whatever. There's a certain amount of muscle memory that will be quite a bit different between car and motorcycle.

Again, though, cars aren't hard to manually shift, and it really doesn't take that long to be 'good enough' to drive one and understand if it feels comfortable or not. It's one of those weird things that some folks just have a mental barrier against until they really try it.

Guys, I know to go to a parking lot and I'm not afraid of learning or anything like that. I seriously have no friends that have access to one that aren't, like, show cars or something. Would a dealer really let me just thrash one as a tester? I guess anything to sell a car I was in your position with my current car. I hadn't used a manual except for some parking lot trials to get me familiar with how stuff feels and how to get the car moving.

Since you've played with one before, at least you can get it moving even if it isn't smooth. One model I was mildly interested in, I simply told the salesman, "hey, I know I want a manual but I'm not great at them yet, can you humor me and drive the car around a bit while I'm the passenger? Didn't learn as much as I could've on the street, but it was one of those bigger dealerships with a lot of property so I could get it into 2nd and even 3rd with some clunky shifts.

No worries about holding up traffic, and I got to feel the driving position and how the steering felt. If you really want to go out on the road, test an auto that's as close to the spec you want as you can get. You'll get lots of important info even if it's the wrong transmission. Getting from the dealership to the highway was a little nerve-wracking, but once on the highway I was pretty much set.

If you can get it moving and you know the mechanics of what's going on as you've said in your post , then the rest is just finesse and handling special cases.

Avoid hill starts and don't sweat it. I'm of the opinion that you don't really get comfortable with a manual until you own one. Have you driven anything at all that would be considered manual?

Have access to a riding lawnmower? So take everything I'm about to say with a grain of guesswork and bullshit The closest things I've driven to a modern manual have been one 50s Ford and one 60s GMC grain trucks roughly this and this respectively , and I don't think anything will force you learn quick like the knowledge that if you screw up, the 15 tons of wheat behind you will probably crush you right quick.

Note: farmers' kids do all sorts of things we probably shouldn't. I think the best thing those taught me though is to get used to where your clutch actually bites as quickly as possible.

Once you have that down, it really isn't too far off of just driving auto if you aren't trying to make it different. This was lesson one of driving for me. Close clutch control I learnt by my instructor getting out of the car and walking alongside while I had to keep pace with him while slipping the clutch in second gear. Final lesson was balancing the vehicle on the clutch while in a traffic queue on a hill.

Obviously it's not great for the clutch, and you don't really want to do it too much, but hill starts and so on do demand that kind of skill.

Frennzy wrote: geat selector Wonder how many times it 'randomly' picks Beowulf. Driving a manual is not some huge momentous thing, to be honest.

If you know what you're 'supposed' to do to get a car moving, the rest of it is just learning the feel of the clutch uptake and the like. If you're concerned about test drives, just take an auto out to get a feel for the car. From your OP I'm gathering that the cars you're looking at are mostly sporty types, so generally the shift action will have a pretty good feel economy cars with sticks tend to have a much higher risk of sloppy feeling manuals, but I haven't heard of many premium manual cars with that problem.

You'll usually find first gear by pushing the stick left and then away from you. Keep the clutch in or you will stall the car! But don't worry: You will stall trying to shift into gear, but with time you will get it! Some cars have a push-button emergency, or parking, brake control as above.

Many others have a lever with release button at the end. Now that the car is running, make sure your emergency brake handbrake is off. Since you are on flat ground, the car won't roll anywhere while you are figuring out what to do. Release the clutch until you feel the car start to roll a bit. Press down on the gas until the needle on your tachometer is between and rpm.

This is the tricky part! Get a feel for this biting point when the car starts to shudder a bit because it will make learning to drive manual a lot easier. Practice until you can get to the point quickly. Begin to slowly add some gas by pushing down the gas pedal a little bit. Give it enough gas to move the tachometer needle to like "1" or "2," that is, to rpm. If you give too little gas, the car will stall. If you give too much, you begin to burn the clutch, which is no big deal for a beginner, but over time can wear out the clutch.

Now that you are giving the car a little bit of gas, don't release the clutch fully just yet. Release it when you can feel the gears engage. This will feel like a vibration you can sense through the sole of your foot. Once you get to that point, you can release the clutch, and drive around without using the clutch, just as you would in an automatic transmission car.

You have started a manual car! I found this technique of looking for the biting point made it easier for me to learn manual. Once I came across this method, I learned how to drive very quickly! I believe this is truly the easiest way to drive a manual car.

Don't worry. The car is fine, you didn't hurt it. Just push the clutch back in and turn the key, and that will start the car back up.

Make sure the car is in neutral, and go through the steps again. Whenever you feel like the car is going to stall, you can just push the clutch back in. This video shows you the parts of the car you need to know, including how you let out the clutch pedal and push in the gas pedal. To shift from first to second, press in on the clutch and pull the gear shift down towards you. To shift up to third gear, press in on the clutch and move the gear shift up and to the right.

Shifting, in my opinion, is a lot easier than starting to move the car. Look at the "H" pattern on the gearshift knob to learn the different gears. You shift from 1, to 2, to 3, to 4, to 5, and then to 6, if you have a sixth gear. How do you shift into the higher gears? It is pretty much the same procedure as starting the car up, except much easier. Going from second to third and then fourth gear is the same process, and even easier.

In order to make a totally smooth shift, you have to balance the gas and the clutch very well. Don't worry, this comes with practice. To shift from first to second and then into higher gears, watch your tachometer. When the neele reads or rpms, your engine is ready for you to shift into higher gear. How do you know when to shift? You can either look at the rpms or the speed you are going. You should usually shift at to rpms. The speed to shift gears varies with the car you are driving, so look at the instruction manual to determine the speeds.

The speed for each gear isn't as important for upshifting as it is for downshifting. Calm down. So why did you stall? You put the car into first gear, but you didn't give the car enough gas to move. It wanted to move, but there wasn't enough gas, so it stalled. The silver pad on the left of this automatic transmission car is where you can rest your left foot.