Well next wensday or friday i will be picking up my 02 ls sport and well i need some tips on driving a 5-speed i was forced to drive a older sho when every one was drunk but that was not so good... the car is 45 mins away and im going to drive it home.
Let the clutch out SLOW and learn to feel for the engaging point.
manual is spelled m-a-n-u-a-l.
put the car in 1st, with the clutch in (all the way down). let it out slowly until you feel where it starts to grab. this is the 'engagement point'. memorize where it is because you want to get to that point quickly without going past it or else you will stall and buck
rev the car up to about 2500rpm, and let the clutch out until you hit the engagement point. when you get to the engagement point (you'll feel the car start to move), keep the revs the same and let the clutch out just a bit beyond the engagement point and HOLD IT there. the car will start moving as your speed builds, you can apply more throttle and release the clutch more and more.
your 'go' foot and 'clutch' foot should always be inverses of one another.. if one is all the way down, the other is all the way up, and vice versa.
the clutch foot doesn't move at a constant speed when you're starting from a stop. It pauses near the engagement point when you first start moving in order to let the engine transfer energy to the transmission. Once you master that, the rest is pretty simple.
Cavs can actually be tough if you ask me. My biggest mistake was dropping the clutch too fast. Let it up slowly. My engagement was higher than i had expected and i really screwed up my drive home. As Skwirl said, once you feel it start to catch, hold it. Dont keep letting go at the same pace.
What Ive experienced with manuals is that no matter how much someone explains it, you will probably stall it or chirp the tires or screw up a few take offs and gear changes. The best thing to do is just drive it. I learned to drive in about 3 hours of solid driving. After that I could drive well enough to get around town.
Like was already said the biggest thing is learning where the engagement point is.
Tinkles wrote:Let the clutch out SLOW and learn to feel for the engaging point.
Just to add to this, if you let the clutch out slow enough, when you are feeling where the engagement point is, even with your foot off the gas, the car will not stall, you just have to do this very slow. The car will pull itself along once the clutch is released. Just do this slow slow slow.
Just do your best to be sensitive to feeling the car.. your new to it so it will take some time. As long as you understand the basics to it, you really just need to feel the car, it will tell you what it wants.
