Xenonk Posted July 12, 2005 Share Posted July 12, 2005 Another piece of advice: Don't rest your left foot at the clutch pedal, even a little pressure there caused by your foot weight, can cause premature stress in the clutch itself... Bottom line: Only use your left foot when you are actually changing gears!!!! Flavio Zanetti Boston, MA If you only knew of the advantages of feather clutching, left foot braking, clutchless shifting and O'Neil shifting. In the early stages of driving a stick, one should be able to learn to creep the car even without ADDING any throttle and learn the significance of how a laboring engine should feel like and understand car control. Once you learn that portion of any car, you should be able to drive the car without any clutch or tranny issues. Try learning how to move the car (even on small inclines because the GT has the torque to do so) without using the the throttle and minimize the clutch use, when you understand how simple and fast the clutch is fully engaged on 1st gear at even 1 mph and running off on idle engine speeds, then you'll know that riding the clutch in traffic is actually a pathetic excuse that only ignorant people who refuse to learn to drive stick the right way and to drive stick in DC/LA traffic are real pansies. Ranting Complete. Keefe Keefe Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fzanetti Posted July 12, 2005 Share Posted July 12, 2005 Excellent Xenonk... But I guess a good portion of that "ignorance" (from the dictionary - lack of knowledge) is because, we in the US, have most of our cars automatics, as opposed to countries like Italy, France, Brazil, among others, have the majority of their cars manuals, only top luxury cars come in automatic, and the population don't care too much for them either (mostly elderly people with lots of money to buy them).... Therefore the lack of manual trannie cars in US, limits first the amount of people to be able to learn and the age, once you actually learn how to drive in an auto car and then you learn how to in a manual car.... :-) Flavio Zanetti Boston, MA Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
psucaptainkickass Posted July 12, 2005 Author Share Posted July 12, 2005 Aww, the poor Grand Am gets the boot now eh? Actually the Grand Am has been booted for some time. I was carting around the parents 98 Grand Prix GT until I got the LGT. Not a bad car at all, in fact I was surprised on how well it held up, no major problems recorded. Now if it wasn't such a beast of a car to manuever..... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sjg Posted July 12, 2005 Share Posted July 12, 2005 I had only driven an MT a handful of times before getting one on the LGT Wagon. My wife was my patient instructor through those first few days. It's a lot easier now although I'm still not as comfortable as I am with an auto. Also, I don't expect to impress anyone with my launch time any time soon. I don't know what the long term impact of stalling and heavy clutch use during the first few days will be. The car now has about 3K on it so it's too early to tell but everything seems to work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Huffer Posted July 13, 2005 Share Posted July 13, 2005 Nice post Keefe. I am sick and tired of autos in this country. I grew up in New Zealand, and only drove autos out of necessity (donor cars etc). Manual is my shift of choice. But it's tough to find an older car with an MT. *sigh* Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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