So for those that have kids or taught someone how to drive stick, what are you tips. This was our first outing and he did ok, I am just looking for sage advice from the collective group. He will be 17 in December and feel this is about the right time to get him started.
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Awesome Joe...
Fan-damn-tastic, Joe! Bringing him up right.
Awesome!
When I was taught, I spent months just learning the clutch feel. No gas pedal... just working the clutch and learning how to get the car going without the gas pedal...
Learning the sweet spot of where the clutch is engaging is the crux of the matter to start for sure, the more torque produced at or near idle the easier or rather the more forgiving the car is to this method, in my experience this makes the new driver starting on a manual more successful.
Made sure all 3 of my kids could drive stick. My 2 boys both own Tesla’s. My daughter lives in NYC with no car. I’ve got a feeling that one day when my boys get to the point they can afford the “fun” car they will feel the need to get another manual car. You can’t beat it for fun even if it’s slower than some of these fancy automatics.
I taught my son on both the Cayman and the Spyder. The Cayman is easier, it has more momentum in the flywheel, and more torque. My daughter wants to learn, we need to find the time.
At the Motorcycle Safety Foundation license school, they had us sitting there for 5 minutes just repeatedly finding the engagement point. Both feet down, just rocking forward and back, forward and back. The school bikes were all 100cc, except for 2 200cc bikes, one of which I rode because I was one of two people there who had ridden before.
Of course, you can do that all day long with a wet clutch, not so with our dry clutches.
My BMW R100 has a very car-like dry clutch. One that will need replacement soon, after 63,000 plus miles.
Driving a stick is becoming a lost art that should be taught to every young driver IMHO. You never know when the skill might come in handy.
It also connects a young person to your personal history and may well be a story that they tell their kids.
To me, a priceless process and opportunity to bond and teach.
A vehicle with strong low-end torque and modest power is best, especially if you're in hilly country. Years ago I taught my GF at the time on a diesel Jetta. It was fairly hard to stall but she succeeded, more than once!
I taught my son on my daily driver, back then, a speed yellow, 425hp turbo, 911 cabriolet. He drove me to work one morning and choked it off twice at a stop light. I told him he needed to give it a little more gas and on the third try, he smoked the tires across the intersection. He's a very conservative driver now 🙂
@*LongFella posted:...No gas pedal... just working the clutch and learning how to get the car going without the gas pedal...
@DannyP posted:...At the Motorcycle Safety Foundation license school, they had us sitting there for 5 minutes just repeatedly finding the engagement point. Both feet down, just rocking forward and back, forward and back...
^^^^ THIS
If you've been driving an automatic for a while, your right foot has developed the light feel you need for driving, while your left foot has been dozing on the floor.
Getting that knack for the friction point is the keys to the castle.
In a parking lot, have him practice getting the car moving with no gas pedal at all. If he can do that five times in a row without a stall, he's home.
Danny’s tip of finding a parking lot and just doing 1’st gear starts over and over is great. Once you’re moving, upper gear shifts are much easier.
Once he/she feels semi-comfortable starting from a stop, find a parking lot with a very gentle slope uphill and park on that and do the start from stop again. As Danny said, let them find the clutch engagement point on the slight hill and play with clutch engagement: More pedal push = slip backwards. Let the pedal up = slide uphill. I first explained the mechanics of what’s going on with the clutch and my two both understood that right off. Then they could understand why the pedal movement translated to car movement and how it was controlled.
Once they get the engagement feel, then show them how to hold on a hill with the handbrake to not roll backwards downhill when stopped, then do the start from stop thing assisted by the hand brake.
Both my kids learned on automatics - That’s all we had back then. My son now has 6-speed 911 and has gotten pretty good with it. He’s always taken to the Speedster without much trauma, but he’s had a motorcycle for about 20 years, too, so that helps. My daughter and her hubbie are both quite happy with Their automatics.
@Sacto Mitch and @Gordon Nichols you guys are spot on. His left foot was completely useless for the first 10-15 minutes. I’m fortunate as I don’t need to do the parking lot thing and we can just do circles around the neighborhood. I had him try just coming off the clutch without using the gas. He was much more frustrated than I was which was nice to see. We have some slight inclines that we will give a go once he has a better feel for the clutch.
Thanks for the suggestions guys and keep em coming.
Anthony learned at 16 but he was driving a Miata a series 1. Much easier than your car. If he can learn on your car, he will master anything. Church parking lot first then the streets. Once they get it it's like a light bulb turned on.
@Joe Fortino posted:@Sacto Mitch and @Gordon Nichols you guys are spot on. His left foot was completely useless for the first 10-15 minutes. I’m fortunate as I don’t need to do the parking lot thing and we can just do circles around the neighborhood. I had him try just coming off the clutch without using the gas. He was much more frustrated than I was which was nice to see. We have some slight inclines that we will give a go once he has a better feel for the clutch.
Thanks for the suggestions guys and keep em coming.
By the time I was of driving age we lived in the country and had a house with a circle driveway. My driver’s training involved more than a few hundred laps around the circle drive so I could learn how to start off without stalling. After that I had to find a hill so I could learn how to start off while being on an incline. After that everything else was easy.
My first encounter with a clutch was when, at 18, I picked up my first motorbike at the dealer. I was by myself - no one to coach me.
I must have stalled it a dozen times in a row in the parking lot - having to kick start it again each time.
Finally, the light went off. Slow engagement is better. I had been dumping the clutch every time the bike started to move - and the mighty 65cc had no torque at all.
I finally 'got it', and was able to make it home OK. I think trying to teach this point is almost futile. It's something we just have to learn on our own, at our own pace.
Maybe we'd learn quicker if we had to kick-start our cars.
yeah what Mitch said, when you do it slow you can feel where it dies, then you hammer the throttle
Some great tips! I found (with both boys) that when (especially at the beginning) when he says he's done- listen.
At 14 y/o my first bout with a clutch was in a 1954 Cab over straight truck at my friend's father's junk yard. To set the scene ...it had a canvas truck body cover as well as a canvas for the cab roof, I fired it up, into 1st gear and it lurched hard as l let the clutch out, the 100 gallons of old and smelly water that had accumulated on the truck box canvas transferred onto the cab's canvas top which ripped in an instant from the weight and down into the cab onto me .....
‘63 Plymouth Valiant with a slant-6 and 3-On-the-tree at 14. Dad was remarkably patient with me.