Quote:
Originally Posted by TFord
I really want a manual when I get my Camaro, and everyone that could have tought me to drive one is in Georgia!
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We'll be happy to help you here. You could also go to standardshift.com but beware that there's a lot of Camaro haters there, might be better if you don't tell them what you drive.
Do you pay attention to what your automatic transmission does and always know how many RPM your engine is turning now? Can you choose gears well? That seems to be the big problem for most people. For me it was the opposite, I was already great at gear choice and shifting quickly whenever necessary, I was just bad at operating the clutch, specifically at starting from a stop ("launching").
Here's the secret I had to learn to launch well:
It's not just something you have to get done and over with. You're not merely using it to engage the engine to the transmission, you're using it to accelerate the car, and it doesn't work like the gas pedal where you hold it at a spot and wait. Instead, as the clutch comes up, the car goes faster; once you get it near where it engages, you have to match your clutch movement to the speed that the car goes. It helps to think like the clutch is directly driving the wheels for the first 1mph, where each 1/8 inch of clutch travel is another tenth of a mph. Ever since I began to look at it that way, I stopped stalling so much. I think most people just use a lot more RPM and more clutch slip for launching and don't stall because of that...I do it at near idle speed.
I still stall occasionally, and this over-engineered VW requires you to turn the key back to "Off" before restarting, which I always forget now that I'm not stalling so often. I almost got destroyed by a speeding pickup last Friday while I struggled to start the car...I wasn't stalled for THAT long, I suspect he would have run the red light if I wasn't there.