Tips for first time Manual Transmission Drivers from a new Camaro Owner (First post)

[LoneCynic]

Hello everyone,

I have been following these forums for a few weeks now leading up to my purchase of a new 2011 Camaro yesterday. I did not feel worthy to join until I owned one! I purchased the Camaro LS, Imperial Blue, Manual Transmission model. Even that was a stretch for me, but I can say with confidence that it was worth it. I'm 29 years old, and have been enthralled with the Camaro ever since I saw them on the roads when I was a child in the 1980's. My plan was to save up and get one after college, but they discontinued them the year I graduated. Being a poor graduate, I had no funds at the time to acquire one. So, now that they are back and better then ever, I decided better late than never!

That being my introduction, I wanted to touch on a subject that I have seen multiple posts/responses about during my perusing of these forums. That is the matter of new Camaro owners who are driving their first manual transmission vehicle. I see a lot of responses basically stating "practice makes perfect", but no one giving any specific advice. I wanted my introductory post to add something of value to the forum that others may find useful. So I will attempt to do just that.

First, a brief background on this in regards to any notions I have of myself as a semi-"expert", if you will, on the matter. I have been driving now for close to fifteen years. At one time, you could get your driver's license at 15 in the state I lived in. Anywho, the car my father had to loan me to drive was a stick shift. While I baulked at the idea at first, his answer was "This is what I have to loan you, learn or walk." I learned the basics of driving on his automatic transmission vehicle, then, when it was time to drive myself, I had to learn to drive a stick if I wanted to borrow his old car.

This began as a necessity to driving, but quickly developed into a preference that has held strong for 14.5 years to this very day. I have owned only manual transmission vehicles ever since, and absolutely abhor having to drive an automatic, and avoid it if at all possible. I would like to share with you some tips and advice for driving a manual transmission if your Camaro is your first vehicle of this type.

I will begin by stating two things not to do. Don't ride the clutch, and don't "ride" the stick shift. By this I mean, only have your foot on the clutch pedal when shifting, once you shift up to cruising speeds, rest your foot to the left of the clutch. Otherwise you tend to eventually rest your foot against it as your ankle gets tired, and this, over time, will put additional and undue wear and tear on the pedal, its resistance, and the whole clutch system overall. In like manner, do not "ride" the stick as I call it. When you are not shifting, do not drive with your right hand resting on the stick. Believe it or not, this puts an amount, however slight, of extra pressure on the stick, and puts undue wear and tear on it and its tightness as well.

With those tips out of the way, I will begin with what my father explained to me as the first step. That is, "finding the balance between the clutch and the gas." This balance is the point at where, as you ease up on the clutch, the gears begin to engage, and as you ease onto the gas, you begin to take off. Often, people will begin by trying to do this quickly, as taking off is the most difficult first step in driving a manual transmission. Frequent stalls, and other angry motorists honking at you can be stressful and sometimes embarrassing at first. Most find that after taking off, they can manage the shifts up without too much trouble rather quickly, once momentum is gained.

I have seen some advice given here suggesting new drivers go to an empty mall parking lot to practice. This is an excellent suggestion, and one that I too would advise. Plan this for a night when you have the next day off from work so that you can go late enough that there won't still be teenagers and other "obstacles" still lurking around. That way you have plenty of time, and plenty of space to practice.

You should begin by focusing on your take offs, and SLOWLY "find the balance" between the clutch and the gas pedals. Do this very slowly, easing up on the clutch to just where you begin to feel the gears engage, and then slowly ease onto the gas and find that sweet spot between the two. Take time to get this perfected first, and most everything else will come easy by comparison. You will avoid jerky starts, peel out starts, stalling, and lots of public embarrassment once you master this and can make smooth take offs with ease.

Starting out in this manner, once you master that, all your upshifts will become very easy to do because you've "found the balance" with the vehicle, and your transitions between gears will be smooth and make the ride much more comfortable and relaxing for you (and your potential passengers!) Downshifting is a different matter altogether, and really should not be attempted until the previous steps are completely mastered. For now, when approaching a stop, go to neutral, and use the brakes to come to a complete stop, then take off from first again. Later on, I will discuss downshifting, but there are a couple other things you need to master first before you start practicing that.

There is a second, three way balance that you should "graduate" to after mastering the primary balance. It is a VERY important balance to master because, sooner or later, you will find yourself in a situation where it will become an ABSOLUTE NECESSITY. If you do not take time to master it now while you are practicing on flat ground in the parking lot, you could put yourself into a very dangerous, stressful, and potentially accident-prone position, so make sure you learn it. More on that situation following the explanation of the second balance.

This technique is the balance between the clutch, the gas, and the emergency/parking brake. What you need to do is begin at a full stop, put the parking brake up, and take your foot off the brake pedal. Now, with your left foot on the clutch held all the way in, and your right foot hovering over the gas pedal, put the vehicle into first gear, and place your right hand on the parking brake with the button depressed while holding the brake up, keeping the vehicle in place. What you want to do here is ease off the clutch, and onto the gas as you normally would with the first balance, but at the same time, as you reach the sweet spot, also ease the parking brake down and off with your right hand. Your goal is to locate the three way sweet spot where you can make a smooth takeoff, taking the brake off seamlessly in the process.

This is very tricky to do at first, and can be a little frustrating, but it is extremely important that you learn how to do this, and do this well. The reason for this is that, sooner or later, you WILL come upon a stop light, stop sign, backed up traffic, etc. where you are stopped on a steep incline/hill. Trying to do a smooth takeoff in this situation, when there is a car directly in front of you, and if your luck is as poor as mine, directly behind you with his front bumper nearly kissing your tailpipe, it is going to be extremely difficult to have enough room to take off and not hit one of them. If you don't have that technique mastered, taking your foot off the brake and trying to slide to the gas while quickly releasing the clutch to the right spot to take off could either stall you, or if the hill is steep enough, you could roll right back into the car behind you.

If you have that mastered, then taking off on inclines is no sweat, and you will be PREPARED for that eventuality. Once you have mastered the first, and then second balances, you will have the steepest part of the manual transmission learning curve behind you. Everything you need to learn and master now will be easy by comparison. The next thing you want to learn is "shifting by sound, not by sight." What this means is learning to shift by hearing the sound of the engine to determine when you need to shift rather than looking at the speedometer and RPM gauge and trying to do it at an exact speed or RPM reading.

Learning by sight is good early on, so you know roughly where and when to shift so that your car stays at roughly 2000 RPMs as you drive. Now, as you do that, listen to the sounds the engine makes, and just as it starts to whine as the RPMs go up past the quarter mark between 2000 and 3000 RPM point, shift, and listen to how it sounds more relaxed and then up to a whine again when you need to shift again as your speed increases. Over time, you will learn how to shift by sound, instead of just by sight. This allows you to keep your eyes on the road, and not be concerned with looking down at the dash gauges every few seconds as you drive. This will come naturally over time, but if you are aware that it is something you will be learning and doing anyway, you can purposely listen for it and to it as you learn the early steps to make the process that much quicker and easier.

Once you have mastered all of the above, then you can think about learning how to downshift. In all honesty, you can always just drop to neutral and use the brakes to come to a stop when in towns. Downshifting really comes into play out on the open road, when on winding roads, or when going up and over mountain roads. What this entails is a combination of driving by sight and sound. The most basic example is a slight incline on the interstate. You are in fifth gear going 65mph, and even though you are pushing the gas down farther like you would in an automatic to gain momentum going uphill, you notice that your speed continues to decrease despite giving it more gas. This is because the fifth and sixth gears are actually turning at a rate faster than the engine gear, which is why you will often hear them referred to as "overdrive gears".

So, even though on flat road, you would never be going 65 mph in fourth gear, it is actually the gear you need to shift down to so your car can get enough power and momentum to get up the hill at the same speed you were going in fifth gear at the bottom of the hill. On mountain roads, I have had to shift down to third or even second to maintain a speed of 45mph on a sharp incline. Normally you'd be burning out your transmission on flat open ground going that fast in those gears, but in this situation, it will be smooth and just right to maintain speed.

Winding roads with lots of not too sharp turns is really where downshifting makes driving a stick shift fun. This where you are on a straight stretch and a slight turn is coming up ahead. There is one of those yellow signs that says a tractor trailer should slow down to 35 mph to safely make the turn. I've found that in a car, you can safely takes these at about 8-10mph over what is safe for a semi truck to take them at. So you approach the turn going 55mph in fifth gear, and as you get just about to it, you shift down to fourth gear, which slows the engine down to that range (40-45mph), and then ease back onto the gas and go around the turn with little or no braking. Then depending on if there is another turn or not, you shift back up for another straight stretch, or shift down again if another, sharper turn follows directly after the first.

This is in a range between intermediate and advanced manual transmission driving however, and you really should not attempt it early on. Wait until you have been driving a stick for a year or so before you go into unknown turns with this downshift method of not using the brakes much at all. If you are dying to try it sooner, make certain it is a road that you know VERY well and have driven many times previously. That way you have some idea of what to expect and can practice your downshifting in the process.

Don't try it on roads you don't know until you are very experienced at it. Even for me, if I've never driven the stretch of road before, and I am downshifting, I shift down to the speed that it suggests for semi-trucks just to be safe the first time. Don't do this on winding mountain roads though, those should always be taken cautiously and carefully. There are too many things that could go wrong and no where to run into a shoulder or ditch if things get out of control.

I know for many of you this is simple stuff that is already second nature to you, but I wanted to throw some ideas and advice out there to those brand new to manual transmission. I hope maybe this post explains or answers some questions people might have, but thought might be too embarrassing to ask. With these techniques and lots of practice, you are sure to love driving a stick before you know it. You might even come to love and prefer it like I do.

On that note, I'll finish with a funny story about myself that, unfortunately, has happened to me on more than one occasion. Other long time manual transmission drivers might know exactly what I am talking about.

One time, my father had borrowed my pickup truck to pick up some supplies for an outdoor party he and my mother were hosting. Mom was busy in the kitchen and asked me to run out to the store and buy some milk and butter for what she was baking, as she hadn't realized she was so low when she'd gone grocery shopping earlier in the week. I told her dad had taken my truck, so she told me to take her car. I grabbed the keys and rushed down to the corner market a few miles away and grabbed the necessities she needed.

Her car was an automatic, but had a nice stereo in it, so I had some music playing and was just about back home from the store. I turned onto our street, and wasn't thinking about anything at all except just get home and back to whatever I was doing prior to that. Somehow, I heard the sound of the engine start to whine ever so slightly, and without a second though, my body reacted, and I attempted to "shift by sound" as I explained above. Problem is, there was no clutch, and no gear shift, so my right hand swung out and grasped at air, but I barely had even a split second for that to sink in. My left foot had moved over and shot to the floor towards the non-existant clutch. It found something else though, that awful, heaven forsaken fat brake pedal all automatics seem to have. My whole body lunged forward and into the constricting force of a working seatbelt as I brought a car going 45 mph to a DEAD HALT.

Thankfully, there was no one behind me. I realized what I'd done, laughed to myself, and headed the rest of the way home, but I've pretty much tried to avoid driving automatics ever since, because it is too engrained in my mind to drive a manual. I did it one other time with a rental car on vacation when they didn't have a manual available...but..that's another story for another time, as this is already a monumental first post. So I'll stop here for now.

If anyone has any questions about stick shift, or wants me to describe the advanced techniques, please let me know. Good to meet you all, and good to be here among fellow Camaro owners!

-LoneCynic

[PQ]

Hmmmmm........... A6

Guess I get to skop this one.

[LoneCynic]

Wow, you must be one heck of a speed reader, I only just posted this moments ago. By the way, what does "Skop" mean? I am unfamiliar with the term.

[larryt1026]

Originally Posted by LoneCynic

Wow, you must be one heck of a speed reader, I only just posted this moments ago. By the way, what does "Skop" mean? I am unfamiliar with the term.

He means skip.

And thanks for the write-up!

[Kurushio]

Thats a heck of a first post. Good suggestions but not much new. As for the last part of your post ive done that too a few times. Usually though it was when i was coming to a stop i would put both feet down but only one foot hit a pedal lol.

[John Shields]

Originally Posted by LoneCynic

Wow, you must be one heck of a speed reader, I only just posted this moments ago. By the way, what does "Skop" mean? I am unfamiliar with the term.

I'm actually surprised he didn't put:



Now back to reading the wall o' text. Haha.

[GMtothecore]

Wow, that was one hell of a manual transmission lesson....welcome to the team.




I love the "D" spot (or "S") that my shifter sets in! Lol

[PQ]

Originally Posted by LoneCynic

Wow, you must be one heck of a speed reader, I only just posted this moments ago. By the way, what does "Skop" mean? I am unfamiliar with the term.

Ya, I was basically making a joke. I have a A6 (auto tranny) so I can skip it. lol

Looks like a really thorough write up though.

[SlingShot]

Good write up !!! It was easy reading for a change, with proper spelling and grammar. Do you have experience writing technical papers ?

[jackka]

Good read even for a somewhat experienced stick shift driver like myself! Thanks

[mikeSS]

wayyyyyy to long to read...

[pugandbull]

Although I have driven a manual for many many years, I found this to be very informative. I have driven an automatic for a year now, so I hope I won't forget how to drive a M6 when I finally get a new Maro!

[piam101]

This is a really good write up and I appreciate you taking the time to explain things. When I'm ready to order my Camaro it will be my first manual transmission.

[LoneCynic]

I get it now, that makes sense. I get why you'd skip it if you had an automatic. How is the tap shift option on those? Have you played with it much? Is it intuitive? I'd like to give it a try sometime just for fun.

When I was viewing the forums these past few weeks, I did see a handful of people mention they were new to manual transmission with their Camaros, so I thought I'd try to help them out. Being a new Camaro owner myself (2 days and running!) That was the only piece of expertise I could contribute for my first post. The rules said we should help each other out, so while in my daily life I laugh at such remarks as "I've never driven a stick, but I'm pretty sure I could if I had to." I figured I ought to come out the gate here with -something- that might be beneficial to at least a few members.

Thanks for the kudos on my writing and readability. Yes, I did have education in technical writing per say. My bachelor's degree is in Political Science/American History, so I spent many a long night writing 30-50 page term papers back in my college days.