After teaching several of my friends to drive a stick, including my
girlfriend, who is now my wife, I've found a little trick that makes it
easier, and keeps them from causing much damage to the transmission.
It's Mike's suggestion, don't worry about the gas at first, but instead of
just letting them try to get going, have them let the clutch out slowly
until they feel the clutch start to engage and then push the clutch back
down. If you have them do this like 10 times before they do anything else,
they learn that pushing the clutch down is the "safe" position, and they'll
get a feel for where the clutch engages and all that jazz.
The best effect of this is that the first time they try to actually get the
car moving, when the car starts to move, and they invariably freak out, they
push the clutch down instead of taking their foot off of it which is most
people's first instinct.
I'll probably try the speed bump lesson next time, that seems like a good
one as well.
-Scott
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Allendorfer, Mike [mailto:mwa96imp@regionofdoom.com]
> Sent: Monday, August 20, 2001 21:28
> To: boris@elpiner.net
> Cc: ba-autox@autox.team.net
> Subject: Re: renting a car with a manual tranny
>
>
> One suggestion I have heard is to teach the student to let
> the clutch out in
> a parking w/o touching the gas. When they can do that w/o killing the
> engine, they are ready to learn to add throttle. The rest is
> fairly simple.
> Oh, having them start at a speed bump is a good second
> lesson. Just park
> them on the start of the bump and then have her start up the
> speed bum w/o
> killing the engine.
> I'm assuming she knows how to steer and pay attention
> already. Of course
> when my daughter was learning, she would change lanes while
> looking down to
> the lever and figuring out where to move it to next :-)
> Mike
|