5 Things You Should Never Do In A Manual Transmission Vehicle

Hello everyone and welcome In this video we'll be talking about five bad habits that you may fall into driving a manual transmission vehicle. And the reason I'm making this video is because you know behind the scenes there's a lot of things happening with a manual transmission that you may not be thinking about if you don't fully understand how they work. So we're gonna get into these bad habits and talk about why exactly you may not want to do them. So the first one is you shouldn't rest your hand on the gear shift in a manual transmission vehicle you shouldn't use it as a hand rest instead whenever you need to shift gear, you know do the gear shift and then take your hand of put it back on the wheel, do the gear shift take your hand off put back on the wheel if you need to down shift take your hand off put it back on the wheel you shouldn't be resting your hand on the gear shift so why shouldn't you rest your hand on the gear shift? well you have too understand whats happening within the transmission so when you are shifting a gear you have a selector fork and you are pushing that selector fork up against a rotating collar and you press that collar into the gear that you wanna choose So what you have happening is you have static object that just moves back and forth rubbing up against this rotating component thats used to select the gear So you're gonna have a little bit of wear on that selector fork when you do shift gears. But it's not much because it's a very short duration where you pressing up against it now if you're leaving your hand on the gear shift while it's in gear what's happening is you could be applying pressure on that selector fork up against that collar so you've got a rotating component pressing up against that selector fork and you can wear out that selector fork and so you don't want to be doing that. Now if you just put a little bit of a pressure on it if you're not really touching it much if you're just kind of holding in place because you're going to you know select another gear next it's not a huge deal but you should know that putting pressure on it can cause premature wear of those gear for it's because you're pressing up against the rotating component and you can even find in owner's manuals it will tell you not to use the gear shift as a hand rest. now another good reason not to leave your hand on the gear shift is that it's also just a good idea to have both hands on the wheel for maximum control especially in any sort of competitive environment. So moving on to number two one bad habit is to leave it in gear while you're sitting at a stoplight so if you come up to a stoplight the best idea instead of just leaving it in gear take it out of here put it in neutral and let your foot off the clutch so why should you do this well here is the pressure plate and this is the diaphragm spring and so this is what's going to be engaging and disengaging your clutch and so within your transmission this is the throw out bearing and so when you push in that clutch pedal what you're doing is you're pushing the throw out bearing up against this diaphragm spring and you're relieving pressure so that it doesn't clamp down on that clutch disc so when you're sitting at a stoplight and you put it in gear what you're doing is you're pressing this up against it and you can wear out these throw out bearing so it's unnecessary wear to just have it sitting there so you can just put it in neutral let out the clutch and then you know it can sit there and it's not wearing up against it now the other thing is when you do have your clutch engaged with it in neutral you're not gonna have your clutch spinning in there so you know if you did start to have some clearance issues with your clutch you could have some premature wear just sitting there with an in gear rather than engaging it now people will argue hey you know you want to have it in gear just in case you need to get up and go or whatever but you know there's plenty of scenarios where there's going to be a car in front of you a car behind things like that there's no need to just leave it in gear and it doesn't really take any time to put it into gear it's a very quick thing to do and the other thing people say it's like hey you know you might get rear-ended you want to have it in gear so that you know if your foot comes off the clutch your vehicle stops it's like well you should have your foot on the brake so if you are going to get rounded your foots are going to be on the break I've had this happen to me twice unfortunately in my Subaru STi where I've been stopped with my foot on the brake cards in neutral and I've been hit from behind and it's not a big deal you know you keep your foot on the brake your kind of natural reaction in an emergency situation like that is a tendency to break because you don't want to move you're not trying to move so your thought is I need to stop moving so you hit the brake when your foots already on it you know obviously you're just going to stay stopped but anyways the big point there with leaving it in neutral when you come to a stop light is to prevent premature wear of this throw out bearing which is going to be pressing up against that diaphragm spring moving on to number three you should never use the clutch to hold yourself on a hill and this may seem pretty obvious but plenty of people still do it where you basically feather the throttle and the clutch pedal to get that sweet spot where your vehicle doesn't roll down the hill but what you're doing is you're burning up the friction material on your clutch disc so your clutch is spinning at one speed and your engines is the pressure plate here which sandwiches this clutch disc between the flywheel this is going to be rotating at another speed based on your throttle so you're rotating this at one speed in order to bring this up to speed and in doing so you're just gonna be wearing out this friction material because this is rubbing up against the pressure plate and flywheel and so you're going to be wearing out your clutch and there's just absolutely no reason to do that so instead what you should be doing is just holding the brake when you're on the hill that seems pretty obvious but the next question is okay well how do I accelerate well there's two things that you can do actually probably three things a lot of modern cars now come with break hold and so when you're on a hill and you have the clutch pressed in when you let your foot off the brake they'll tend to hold you now plenty of vehicles do not for example I don't believe this nissan 370z has it and so in that case if it's not a big hill you know you can just kind of wait and then get on to the throttle fairly quickly bring out your clutch a little bit so you know you're ready to do that and have a transition you may roll a little bit back but not much where it matters now the third scenario let's say you're on a pretty steep hill and you don't want to roll back because there's a car right behind you well what you're going to do is pull the brake you've got your clutch pedal and your foot on the brake you can now let your foot off of the break assuming your brakes going to hold you and so then what you want to do you can put it in gear now you're going to start to ease off of the clutch where it starts to bite and you'll feel this because the car is going to start to talk a little bit and then you're going to let off the brake and then you're off now it's a good idea to practice this on flat ground so you get the hang of it before you're actually on a hill and you need to actually do it for real so you know you can just find an empty parking lot something like that pull the ebrake start to let the clutch out you can feel it start to grab let me break down and you accelerate you don't roll back at all number four didn't apply a lot of throttle when you're not at a very high engine rpm so for example if you're in sixth year and I'm going 40 miles per hour right now it's not a good idea to floor it because what you're doing is you're lugging the engine it's not a huge gearing disadvantage and you're telling it to accelerate as hard as it can and so you're kind of conflicting there so rather than you know flooring in 6th gear it's a much smarter idea don't be lazy just down shift if you need more than 50 or you know go down the second gear if you need you can skip gear so long as you rub match i have a separate video explaining that but it is important that you know if you need to accelerate don't be lazy just down shift because you're going to lug the engine if you have it in you know 60 or 40 miles per hour in the engine RPMs are really low and you're telling it to work really hard but it's that such a huge gearing disadvantage that it doesn't work out it can cause problems and finally number five one thing you don't want to do is while you're driving rest your foot let's see here on the highway rest your foot on the clutch pedal and that also seems pretty obvious but it's also something that some people commonly do and so there are several reasons why don't want to do this first of all resting your foot on that clutch pedal means your clutch may not be fully engaged in so you can have a little bit of slip with their clutch disc you're not putting down full power and you can be wearing out your clutch another reason there is you can be wearing out your throw out bearing once again because you're pressing that throw out bearing against the diaphragm spring as i showed earlier in the video so those are five habits that may be fairly common for some people if you don't fully understand how manual transmission works hopefully that cleared up the confusion and hopefully you know you can learn from that if you are applying any of these bad driving techniques you know from time to time i'll always find myself resting my hand on the gearshift lever it's not the end of the world you know I'm not applying a ton of pressure on and wearing out that fort but there are some little things like that what you may not always be thinking about which you you know but should put a little bit of thought into while driving a manual transmission vehicle as you could wear it out a little bit sooner so thank you guys for watching and if you have any questions or comments feel free to leave those below I guess it really need to make the noises i mean it's got a great sounding engine.

Channel: Engineering Explained

Views: 12,434,940

Rating: 4.6880603 out of 5

Keywords: how not to drive a manual, how to drive a manual, dont drive a manual, neutral at stop light, hand on gearshift, hill start, driving a manual, driving a stick shift, dont do this, 5 things, 10 things, never do this in a manual transmission, turbo, transmission, automatic, cars, engines, explained, how it works, engineering explained, how to drive, driving techniques

Id: _cbZlhduYJY

Length: 8min 32sec (512 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 10 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

I'm always baffled by "don't rest your foot on the clutch pedal." I understand the mechanical reasons, but, why is this even a thing? Clutch pedals are so high, you'd have to ride around with your knee jacked up in the air to do this.

[u/Dave0549jv]

The video is effectively explaining why you should have mechanical sympathy for your car, then he goes and pulls the handbrake like he's trying to start a stubborn old lawnmower.

[u/BlackKnightSix]

Can anyone explain what kind of "problems" you can end up with by giving a large amount of throttle in a high gear? He gave good explanations for the rest, which I already knew, but I know less on high gear, low RPM, lots of throttle.

Say I am cruising in 6th at 45mph which is about 2K in my car. I get an incline on the road and have to give maybe 3/4 throttle to stay 45mph. Now, sometimes I go to 5th just to have the more power but I also have the argument in my head that higher gear is better for MPG and less friction/wear as long as I am not "lugging" the engine, which I consider anything below 1.5-1.7k. I definitely down shift if full throttle is either maintaining or losing the speed I want.

Is 2k at 3/4 throttle causing an issue? I have heard of something about compression being bad or what not, I can't really recall.

[u/[deleted]]

can i get a tldw fuck watching a 8 minute video when hes just reading a list i could skim through in like 30 seconds.

[u/Nass44]

It still amazes me how manual transmission is like a "forgotten art" in the US. Your driving teacher will tell you all this within the first few lessons here in Germany/Europe. Although I guess that some people still let their hands rest on the shifter or don't put the trans in neutral when stopping.

Another tip is not to constantly brake via engine clutch, or at least not by releasing your clutch. I saw friends doing it "because the brakes won't wear out so fast." Which is true, but your clutch will and it's easier and cheaper to swap out brake pads rather than a a clutch, especially if you don't do it yourself.

[u/EngineeringExplained]

Hey thanks for sharing! :)

[u/Peter_Panarchy]

Nice little waterfall I'm the background.

[u/[deleted]]

I watched his rev matching video but I'm still confused....

[u/timberwolvesguy]

Until recently, I never heard about not having the car in gear at a stoplight. Is that something that can cause real issues soon? I like having it in gear just so I'm ready to go when the light turns green or if I'm in traffic.