Agreed! I learned how to drive using a stick. You feel like your more in control of the car/truck. Its a lot more fun to drive a stick and is easier to negotiate snow covered/icy roads or rocky terrian.
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Is it worth it to drive a stick? (Where can you rent a car to learn how?)
- Thread starter Luigi239
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Agreed! I learned how to drive using a stick. You feel like your more in control of the car/truck. Its a lot more fun to drive a stick and is easier to negotiate snow covered/icy roads or rocky terrian.
The tester is an idiot. It should not matter if you are engine breaking or not. Also the brakes on a car are balance for not having to deal with engine adding additional strain on a pair of the wheels. All engine braking does slow down how fast the brake pads wear down.
For me when I am slowing down I do not even bother pushing down the clutch but instead just tap the shifter into neutral. I tend to do that when I a know I am going to have to shift any how. I quite often will go from 6th gear to neutral for the turn then put the car into 3rd.
In a big truck that is considered "out of control" and you will fail your test. They are very expensive to re-take.
What is this? It's like a lot of you have never heard of electronic stability/traction control. Manual might have been better in the days before every other car had this but for everyday driving in slick conditions, I'll take an automatic with modern traction control over a manual without any day of the week.
I'm sure some ice racing Finn who does snow rallies every other weekend might feel differently but performance driving doesn't count.
well those 2 things are great. They are not so effective from starting from a dead stop on ice roads. They more detect one wheel spinning a little 2 freely of the drive wheels but fail when the drive wheels are both spinning like that.
Ice snow. Manual will with the Traction control/Electronic stability will always win the day. With out those 2 the manual still wins on those conditions
One thing I've noticed nowadays that with many cars, the manual shifters have one big problem: very few companies make shifters that work smoothly and allow you to find the right gear properly. It seems only BMW, Honda and maybe Porsche and VW have a clue on a decent shifter. 
Small wonder why everybody is working on improving dual-clutch transmissions. At least on a DCT when you shift gears you don't have to fight vague and rubbery-feeling shifters that seem to be the norm on even most European cars.
Small wonder why everybody is working on improving dual-clutch transmissions. At least on a DCT when you shift gears you don't have to fight vague and rubbery-feeling shifters that seem to be the norm on even most European cars.
Yeh but again what's with the "burn out the clutch in hilly area" bit?
If you mean urban hilly like SF, and a novice at stick driving, well, maybe. Otherwise if you know how to drive the thing then hilly is great for stick.
And as you say, control with the stick is the main reason why I have one. Has saved me soooooooo many a time on this one hill with a half-mile 13% grade with a twist and then 16% for the last hundred yards... getting behind some idiot who loses nerve in snow on the last bit of that vicious upgrade and takes foot off gas... i can manage to gear down, get some traction, get out and pass them before I lose it too and we all end up stuck in the ditch or go over the cliffside (my side, so once I pass I am highly motivated to get by them and get back over).
LOL and then down at the cop substation at the bottom of the mountain, I do stop in there and tell them where to look for the car stuck in snow back on the topside. Cops always shake head, say something about hunters from the city travelling in November without snow tires or a clue...
Why do people take their foot off the gas while going uphill in snow when they start to lose it. God! Makes me nuts. Even happened with a bus one time, coming up through the lower Catskills. The driver must have been new to the route and when we hit some pretty well drifted snow coming up a grade into a town, he either missed a gear or hesitated to give it fuel, you could feel the bus slither.... slow.... finally reach that point of no momentum.. wow... then we slid backwards down the road about a quarter mile, then he backed into a plow turnaround or a pulloff anyhow of some sort, and went on down into the flats for another turn and another go at the drifts. I felt like I was in an airplane that had aborted one takeoff and not offered me a chance to deplane before the next attempt... there was not another soul on the road that night; probably the bus should not have departed the change at Kingston for the western Catskills but they can't always get the forecast right up in there.
That was when I vowed I would always have a runnable rat car in the driveway for times when my own better ride needed some shop time. I don't fancy winter driving so much, but I'll take mine over being a backseat driver in a bus now any time.
I endorse all of the above things this guy said.Give it two weeks and you won't have a worry driving it, 2 months and it's 2nd nature, six months and you'll never want to drive an automatic again.
Even modern and advanced automatics don't seem to give you that great feeling of really having the machine attached to your hands and feet, like you have absolute precise control of how fast the engine is spinning and how much power you're putting to the road.
edit: Sticks are also great because you have an excuse to not lend your car to a majority of people. "Yo brah, can I borrow your wheels tonight?" "It's a stick shift" "Damn dude I'll ask Kevin for his car."
Plus the ladies seem to find it sexier when you're driving a car with stick. True story.I live in New York City and I drive a standard. I'm a maniac right? Haha. Stay out of Manhattan and it's all good. I drive a 2003 Mini Cooper (non-S) and it has a great clutch. I'm not sure if BMW had a part in designing the transmission?
Sure, why not? It can't hurt to know how to drive a stick.
I don't know how many times friends have said "I'd love to drive your car" and then back-out when I throw them the keys and they jump in to find it's a stick.
I don't know how many times friends have said "I'd love to drive your car" and then back-out when I throw them the keys and they jump in to find it's a stick.
