If you release the clutch slow enough, in most cars you can get moving just with idle engine.
Practice in a parking lot if you can, and just do that over and over until you understand the friction point.
Getting moving from a dead stop in first or reverse is really the only hard part of driving a manual, shifting up through the gears from there is trivial.
Learn to shift based off the sound of the engine, dont stare at the tachometer.
If you already know how to drive, learning manual isnt so hard. You are going to stall it out, you arent hurting anything but your pride when you do.
We made our kids go to a church parking lot and drive without the gas pedal. There was much bitching and screaming, but they both learned pretty quickly. Backing up through the circle drive without hitting the curb took much much longer.
Make sure you press down the clutch all the way
In my experience, releasing the clutch without adding throttle will only get you moving in a diesel car.
Gasoline engines will stall much faster, which is part of the reason learning vehicles are all diesel.
People will be annoyed with you and honk at you when you stall at a traffic light or something. Know and accept that fact. Do not mind them. Take your time to do things right. With time you’ll gain muscle memory and you won’t have to think about it at all. Until then, don’t mind the impatient drivers.
I watched my ex drive a manual for over a year. I intently focused on when he was shifting and what not. When I got the car finally for myself, I just got in and went. I had a friend show me how to reverse in the parking lot. I called my supervisor and told her, “I’m driving the kia in today myself, I might be late” and I took my first ride. Made it to work on time, but stalled everywhere I went for two weeks until I got the hang of it. Took a bit longer to get the hang of downshifting.
Dont panic when you stall! You’re just rebooting, keep going!
If you stall and everypne starts getting angry, ignore them and do your thing slowly and safely.
Yup. Once you recover from a stall a few times you can get pretty fast at it, but don’t worry about going slow and methodical.
Safety first!
Except one short mention about riding the clutch, I haven’t seen this yet… Get into the habit of completely removing your foot from the clutch pedal whenever possible. Even just lightly resting your foot against the pedal can wear your clutch out prematurely. Cruising on the highway: remove your foot from the clutch pedal and rest it on the floor. Sitting at the lights: put the car in neutral and release the clutch. Put your foot on the floor until you’re ready to go. Also, it’s ok to coast to a stop with the clutch pedal depressed, but you have much more control if you downshift to a stop and you will extend the life of your brakes, too.
One I haven’t seen here yet. If your battery dies, you can usually get the car rolling (neutral with people pushing, or turn down a small hill) and once moving a bit you can throw it straight into second gear and hit the gas and it should cause the car to start and you can drive it to a destination to replace the battery (or just let it charge the battery if you left the headlights or interior lights or such on and let it die on accident). No second car/jumper cables required.
The first time I pop started a manual car I felt like a god lmao, it’s an awesome feature
You’ve gotten a lot of solid practical advice, so I’ll take it to theory.
Learn how it works and what happens when you push that clutch in and let it out.
Here’s a video with a lot of detail and animation.
Keep the radio/music off. It’s much easier to hear the engine and how the clutch engaged while you are getting used to your new clutch
Accidentally stopping the engine is no shame. Whatever anybody thinks. Focus on not making collisions. You can always just start the engine again. Nothing bad happened. Collisions are the real headache and what is important.
Lots of good advice in here for the basics. Only one I’ll bother repeating is to get used to your clutch by slowly releasing it and getting the car moving without touching the throttle at all.
Also never downshift into first. This is a bit of a soft rule since it can be done, but the speed you need to lose before you do is a lot more than any of the other gears. If it’s a 6 speed, this might even apply to 2nd gear to a degree. To figure out when it’s safe to downshift to first, redline it in first and check your speed. Never do it at or above that speed as a hard rule.
For intermediate techniques:
When shifting while moving, let off the gas a bit before pressing the clutch. The idea is to smoothly stop accelerating to reduce the jerk you’d normally get from going from accelerating, clutch (decellerating), back to accelerating once in the next gear. Your passengers will appreciate it if you can get this timing down, though if you’re on your own, it doesn’t matter as much since you can anticipate the changes in acceleration.
On the opposite end of that spectrum, practice speed shifting once you’re comfortable with clutch timing and gear positions. It’s the same motions as a normal shift, just aiming to do it all as fast as possible. It’ll give you better acceleration when you need it (very noticeable if you compare one and the other when accelerating beside another car from a stop light).
For stop and go traffic and traffic jams, instead of maintaining the same distance from the car ahead of you, try to figure out a constant speed you can maintain and let the cars ahead of you do the pull up (away from you) and then brake to a stop (while you slowly catch up to them). If you can find the right speed, you can stay in first gear instead of needing to get in gear, move up, then clutch. The “getting the car moving without throttle” skill from earlier can help here and sometimes you can go a while in a jam without touching the gas pedal. It’ll reduce the wear on your clutch and brakes if you can drive in a way that uses them less.
And an advanced technique:
Clutchless shifting. If there isn’t a lot of force on the gear, you can pop it into neutral without the clutch quite easily. And by force I mean if you aren’t accelerating or engine breaking. Getting into another gear is harder but also possible. The hard part is that you need to match the engine speed with the transmission speed for the gear you want to shift into. If they match, it’ll just slip in. But matching is easier said than done, since the car is decelerating and the engine also changes speed very quickly with no load. If the speeds are far from a match, it will feel like the gear just isn’t there. If they are kinda close, you’ll be able to find the gear but it will grind when you try to put it in all the way. If they match closely, it’ll just slip in as easily as it slipped out to neutral.
Why would you want to know how to do this? Well, for one, it’s very satisfying to do properly. But I was very glad I could do it when my clutch died. I was able to drive for another week without a clutch because I was competent enough with clutchless shifting. Note that if you need to do this, you have to turn your motor off when you stop (unless you’re on a downward slope), put it in first and start it in first gear to get moving again (which feels awful and is awful for your starter and probably not great for the whole drivetrain, so get it serviced asap but this might at least save you from needing a tow).
This is great advice here, both for moto and cars.
Keep at it.
Nothing really to it, you just need time and lots of practice to build up the “muscle memory” for it, until it becomes little more than a reflex.
The hardest part will be learning how to properly feather in the clutch. Find an empty parking lot and practice stopping fully then starting out with someone who has driven stick before and can give you feed back.
When approaching a light or stop sign, smoothly press down the clutch and break pedal together. If it’s a red light where you might be for a while, pop the gear into neutral and let go of the clutch.
I was taught (rightfully or not) that holding down the clutch too long can damage it.
Really all you would wear out is the throw out bearing doing that and the clutch plate will go before that does. They are like $10 so they always get replaced with a clutch job. The pressure plate can be reused generally for 3 clutches
You can use the emergency brake to keep from rolling back if your car doesn’t have any built in rollback protection.
Just pull the e-brake with your hand, and reduce it at the same rate you engage the clutch when pulling away up hill. Easy peezy.
Otherwise, just make sure you get really good at not riding your clutch for any maneuvers. It’s easy to burn them out if you’re using your clutch to make up for bad driving habits.
You’re going to drive it without lessons? Is that legal where you live? I’m confused about the question
I was just asking for general tips tbh, I have experience driving and rode a motorcycle for several years, I just never had a manual car before. If that makes more sense?
Don’t stall.
