Rep Power: 265

it took me about an hour to learn about all the stuff i needed to do and when to do it. after that i was driving but i still stalled the car about 2 or 3 times when i first started driving. after about a weekend, i was ready to drive around the city. the hardest part was finding where the clutch's engagement point was, after that it was just smooth sailing.


i've been driving manual for about a month now, now that i have the basics down, i want to work on improving the comfort, so there are no more "jitters."

 
Rep Power: 0

one way to get rid of said"jitters" is to drive auto lol... but really, it took me like a week before i really started gettin comfortanle with the way manual works... i still pull the chair up kinda close because im still scared of stalling when i dont press the clutch

 
Rep Power: 0

Took me about 2 hrs at 1AM in a 2003 tacoma, my first car/truck. I had to teach myself with only knowing the common stuff people tell you.

 
Rep Power: 608

Well, i've been driving it since i was 13 on our property and on our job sites. But it is a different ball game on the road.......it took me a few months after i got my license to get good at it.

 
Rep Power: 0

Being from the UK I learnt manual from day 1. After passing my test the first car i could get my hands on was my mum's 96 Civic....Auto.... oh dear god what a stale driving experience. Automatics are for stoners and people who dont enjoy driving...(and yes i **** myself when i finally got my '01 EX - manual of course, took a while). Everytime i get in my mums car now i end up slamming the brakes on between each 'gear'. Nothin like redlining and rinsing the clutch...

d00ma

 
Rep Power: 339

it took me a few months of on and off driving my father's car when I was 18. In those few months I had to make sure no one complained about stick cars so my goal was to be real smooth and accurate with it.

 
Rep Power: 265

yea i wanted to get real familiar with driving a stick before i took it out on the streets, so i drove around my neighborhood a bunch of times, stopping on hills and such, it's during this time that i found teh engagement point. now i don't even think about which gear to put it into, nor do i look at the speedometer, it's like 2nd nature now.

 
Rep Power: 297

Took me a few 1hr sessions in my friends 98 Cougar...

 
Rep Power: 371

self taught... learned right away. I knew the jist of it so i just jumped in and started driving...nobody really taught me. Although it did take some time to get smooth.

 
Rep Power: 265

when i was a kid i would sit in the passenger seat of my dad's maxima and change gears for him (yea that's right, using the left hand to change gears). that was alot of fun.

 
Rep Power: 303

About 10 minutes. A week or so to get smooth, and another month or so to learn really smooth downshifts. Took a month at least before I FORGOT that I am shifting at all. Do it without thinking.

Eh... it's easy on modern transmissions.

 
Rep Power: 265

yea i'm kinduv at that point now. you realize it when you're talking to someone in the car and that person makes a remark about your driving.

 
Rep Power: 341

It took me a long time cuz my hot female driving instructor would give me head while i tried to learn stick..

i guess she loved stick also!!!!

 
Rep Power: 265

i have to agree with Pharoh, you are the wierdest **** on this site. but that's not a bad thing!

 
Rep Power: 435

still learning it. i've never really gotten a chance to get to know my car. i bought it at the end of senior year, and now i'm at college without the car.

 
Rep Power: 0

Wait....ur a MOD and u still dont know how to drive a stick??? What has this site come to?!?!! j/k It just takes some time

I currently dont realize when I shift (been driving stick for about 1.5 years now on the Vic) and i dont even realize when I double clutch... oh wait that's not possible... when I move it into N b4 I rev match and then slide it into the lower gear that I'm aiming for... That took a lil getting used to. clutch, neutral, blip gas, clutch, shift and getting the right ammount of blip in there.. I found out that the synchros spin up to the correct speed when u kinda put the shifter on the next gear then the shifter kinda pops slightly then u just clutch it and ease her in..... hmmmm

 
Rep Power: 380

It took me about 2 or 3 hours of driving to get used to driving and not shifting all that hard. then about a week of road driving to get use to hills and not stalling. and about a month to get decent enoughh to actually say yeah i can drive a stick.

 
Rep Power: 265

that's a good feeling ain't it.

 
Rep Power: 277

My dad handed me the keys to his old S10 work truck as soon as i got my permit and i have yet to ever kill the engine on any car. It came pretty naturally, but i did watch him do it for the first 15 years of my life.

 
Rep Power: 0

I've been driving anything that moves like tractors and things ever since I was like 5 years old. I started racing motocross when I was 3 and a couple years later started driving tractors and 4 wheelers and my cousins nissan pickup truck (that was manual),etc, etc, etc. So by the time I got my Honda I already had really good throttle control and it just took me a few weeks to find the sweet spots in the clutch and to match rpm's with the gears when downshifting. Then shortly after that I started Heel-Toeing witch took me a little longer but now after two years I don't even think about it.

 
Rep Power: 253

i actually comendeered my dad's 97 accord ex stick at age 14 and a half and i drove it around when my rents were gone with a friend. When i turned 15 and a half, my dad taught me, (worst teacher ever), and i got it after about 7 stalls... all he said was alright you're drivin', he gave me no instruction, no advice or anything. I actually just taught my girlfriend how to do it, i gave her a good 30 minutes of talk, then let her do it on her own, surprisingly she only stalled twice before she got out of the parking lot.

 
Rep Power: 289

too long. I drove a 1999 tauras automatic. Then my came to me one day and said i was getting the old f-100. It was a 3 on the tree with a heavy duty work clutch. It took me 5 minutes to get out of the drive way. My dad was freaking out i could tell he wanted to call me a ***. He grew up on a farm in Michigan so he had driven tractors from the age of 9. So once i got it off the street i made it around the corner and stalled it atleast 22 times while my cousin who was riding his bike towards me fell down laughing. After that it took me a week to get to the point where a 1 degree hill didnt terrify me when i stopped on it.

So when i tought my girlfriend. I explained how everything works. Like what the clutch actually does. when i learned all i knew was the clutch is the new pedal. She never stalled it once. i fealt like a ***.

 
Rep Power: 0

It took a few 30-60min. sessions in an '89 Mercedes and I was more than competent. That was about a year and a half ago, I've owned a 5spd. Mazda3 since then and I can drive manual almost seamlessly, sometimes a bit smoother than an automatic if I really try. Occasionally I'll still screw up a heel-toe downshift while coming into a corner, but I blame that on pedal placement and my shoes

Next challenge is mastering the clutch on my CBR, rev matching with bikes becomes a bit more of a must, if you downshift a gear at 10,000rpm abruptly you're probably in for quite a ride...

 
Rep Power: 0

Driving car with stick shift if fun. You will get use to it. Just take time. The begining probably is har because you concentrato on cluch, shifting and you need to pay atention to the trafic. For someone take about couple of weeks to get confortable. Then just improving to the point that you reach 65mi/h and you dont remember when you switch the gear.

 
Rep Power: 285

i learned when i was about 9 or 10 in a nissan sentra....took it up and down my street, but when i got my truck at 16 it took no time. i think that riding motorcycles my entire life kinda helped too

 
Rep Power: 286

my dad took me out to the middle of the city, and made me drive home. Talk about nerve wracking.

But it made me learn REAL quickly.

I did the same thing to my wife. We were out cruising around, when i stopped, and made her drive the 25 miles home on surface streets. She did a good job, but is now very scared of driving manuals. I think it had something to do with the CRX with an ACT 11 lb flywheel, xtreme pressure plate, 6 puck clutch, and 15 psi of boost.

 
Rep Power: 334

I bought my car w/o really knowing how to drive stick, I had the general idea down but just wasn't used to it. Took me about 2 days to really get it down w/o hoping around driving to and from work.

 
Rep Power: 286

Took me about 20 mins of driving on neighborhood streets to get comfortable, but that same day I killed it on a really steep hill with ppl behind me, so I started it up, hit the gas, and dropped the clutch. Needless to say you could smell the tires

I don't think I'm perfectly smooth still after 1 and a half years but thats only when I'm thinking about it. Then again a bunch of ppl have sat in my front seat and didn't notice it was a stick until about 15mins later.

 
Rep Power: 319

yup... 20 minutes or so, but I spent weeks working on the car (new stereo ect.) and pretending I was driving around, and shift gears while the car was parked.

 
Rep Power: 369

I had to drive my EL (first manual car ever) 30+ km home from the dealer with no manual training cause my friend tried to teach me the week before but we ended up hotboxing the car every time and I was unteachable at that point. But once I got the car home I pretty much had shifting down, and it only took me the rest of the week to get starting without stalling.