Sally has always been interested in cars. She's 19 and is trading in her 93 automatic corolla for a 98 Civic EX coupe. we pick it up on Saturday. She has never driven a stick before. I have owned standards before and grew up driving motorcycles but I haven't had to teach someone to drive stick before. Any suggestions would be appreciated. I read that you should have them try to get the car going without using the gas. Just by slowly letting the clutch out you can feel the transmission engage.
Should be an interesting drive home on Saturday...
A driving instructor would be a good idea for a first time driver. If she already has driving experience and road sense, then learning to operate a manual transmission is the easy part. I agree with the large carpark suggestion. Greg.
In regards to a driving instructor only being for first time drivers, with that I don't agree. Going from an automatic to a stick is a very different dynamic. Different habits to make or break, different had placement, etc...
Hand placement and habits will come naturally. The most important parts of driving are road sense and the ability to react in a situation. If these skills are already learned (from experience or a teacher) then opeartion of a clutch and a manual trans. can be learned very quickly just by doing it. Just my opinion. Greg
And that was my initial opinion as well. But on further thought, like reacting in a situation, the reaction is different. With an automatic (driving like one should (not necessarily how most of us do or don't drive)) one has both hands on the wheel and 1 foot on the dead pedal. In a stick the dynamic is different. We're now removing 1 hand from the wheel, putting it on a stick and operating a second pedal.
You get cut off in an automatic and have to drop your speed from 60 to 30 all you do is hit the brake. In a stick, you are hitting the brake, hitting the clutch, downshifting (one less hand on the wheel during this maneuver).
Yes, road sense they should already have, but there's a lot more to driving than road sense. Also, habits that are already in place are a lot more difficult to break than new habits that "come naturally". My wife learned to fly a plane before learning to drive a car. Here she was coming from something more difficult to do to something easier and it took a lot to get her able to pass a drivers test.
I would consider going from automatic to stick an increase in difficulty as opposed to a decrease.
As several already suggested, an empty parking lot is great.
When I taught my daughter, I brought larger boxes and put them where normally cars are parked. This way she can practice parking, pulling out, etc.
After the first lesson, all boxes were pretty much flat and run over :) She's been driving for five years now - no accidents - so those boxes were a cheap investment :)
Just you and her in the car, no other distractions.
After the parking lot bucking bronco ride smoothens out, let her ouf of the corral.
Take her on your best, local country road, where you have the flexibility to go thru all the gears: up and down. Make a circuit out of it, so you can have her do that stretch 10 times or so over and over, all the time moitoring her action.
The sooner she gets comfortable with the stick, the sooner she won't be a concern when she goes out on the hiway. Make her laugh.
The best preventive medicine is to have her carry by herself the costs of buying and owning this very nice car.
Then, unless she's a total airhead, she'll decide on her own to practice extensively in a vacant parking lot, preferably with a small slope, whence she points the car downward, before going out on the streets.
Once she gets the basic idea down, practice is all that's necessary. Daddy should get out of the car unless he can stay quiet and offer moral support. Girl needs to concentrate.
I agree with all this too, but also remember that the first time she has to stop on an incline, it will be a panic situation cause she will roll backwards. I find teaching people how to deal with that situation, and explaining exactly what happens when releasing the clutch pedal helps.
People are so used to the car keeping them from rolling backwards with the auto trannie.
I know you have already gotten tons of comments on this so I agree with some I don't. Anyway. After years of driving an automatic, and playing with tractors learning to drive a stick was not that bad. My now husband took me out to our fairgrounds. Learning to drive the car wasn't bad it was getting up the hill from a stop that was torture, and the scariest thing when driving. Everything else came naturally after a few tries. One note show her how to do it, then sit with while she tries. (I am talking about the hill) providing there is no one around and nothing too close that she can hit if she starts getting frustrated because you are in the car (no offense but I did with my husband because I couldn't stand him just starring at me while I tried to get that car up the hill) get out and let her try on her own. Obviously don't go far and keep the window down so you can yell to her if she needs it. Easiest way my husband taught me was to keep my clutch heel up that way I got full feel of the clutch going in and out. To this day we still have his little car 9 years later so I didn't hurt it, and other than the occasional getting on a slope I love driving a clutch. She will do fine.
Wow! Lots of responses, some of which completely miss the point; how to teach a qualified driver how to use a manual transmission.
I taught both of my kids and my approach is similar to some that have been suggested. I found a level stretch of country road that dead-ended. Then, had the driver start the car in motion in first gear, with only the clutch, no gas. After that became easy, do the same in second gear. After that, just to prove that it could be done, start in third gear. The repeat starting in first gear but with application of gas.
Then start over, the same exercise, but on a modest incline.
Finally, a similar exercise, but on a steeper incline (enough that the car will roll back in short order), and use the handbrake to prevent rollback. Unless you drive in very hilly country, you shouldn't need the technique very often, but it can come in handy when you need it.
This very quickly trains the left foot. And for those who have never done it, no, it is not hard on the clutch to start in second with no gas on a level road.
(Or you could do what my sister did; just drive it home. Nothing like necessity to create skills quickly.)
I taught my stepdaughter to drive using a manual-transmission car (my '93 Civic EX coupe, in fact). She was also taking driving lessons at school, but they use automatics, and frankly I'm not sure the class was particularly useful. My wife and I both believe it's useful to know how to drive a manual; also, we didn't own any automatic-transmission vehicles at the time.
We were in Nebraska, so wide open spaces and back roads were readily available.
My advice:
- Keep reminding her, and yourself, that learning to use the clutch takes practice, and driving will be rough and frustrating for a while no matter how careful she is.
- Sometimes just driving back and forth in the driveway can be good clutch practice when you're first learning.
- Start in an empty parking lot or similar. Move on to low-traffic roads without significant hills when she's comfortable with starting and shifting. Some people develop a tendency to hold the clutch pedal down and freewheel around curves when they're first learning to drive a manual; I'd recommend correcting that, if it appears, before heading onto real roads. (Don't want to lose control going around a curve and run into oncoming traffic...)
- Once she's good with level roads, practice with things like hill starts.
Really, though, it's just a matter of being sensible and practicing. I don't think there are any shortcuts. The main things are to avoid tackling something before she's ready and not quitting out of frustration (which is what happened when my father tried to teach me; I ended up learning on my own, driving a Toyota Tercel around town in the wee hours of the morning when there were no other cars to worry about).
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