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Car TalkMaintenance Tips10 Things You Should Never Do If You Are Using A Manual Car
Maintenance Tips

10 Things You Should Never Do If You Are Using A Manual Car

Tsukasa Azuma
By Tsukasa Azuma
116
Manual car not to do

Driving manual cars is not hard as it seems initially. When it comes to driving a manual transmission vehicle, the act can be seen as both an art and a science wrapped up in one gear-banging package. 

While driving stick-shift cars can be a load of fun, there are some natural tendencies that you might do out of habit and that you should avoid. Read below and find out which ones they are..

10 Bad Habits You Should Avoid When Driving Manual Cars

1. Use The Gear Lever As Hand Rest

We only see the gear lever, what’s happening within the manual transmission is not visible to us. 

While changing gears with the gear lever, the selector fork, which is stationary within the manual transmission is pushed against the rotating collar, and the collar is pressed into the gear that you want to choose. 

Resting your hand on the gear lever may cause the selector fork to come in contact with the rotating collar and thus causing premature failure of the selector fork.

tips on how to drive manual
You should avoid using the gear lever as a hand rest. (Photo: Car From Japan)

2. Use The Clutch To Hold Yourself On A Hill

It wears out your friction material and clutch. There are many ways to avoid rolling down a hill without holding the clutch in, and here is one of those ways that you need to focus on while driving manual cars. 

This practice will not only wear down the car’s transmission mechanism but also influence the car’s free roll practice which is supposed to let the car move swiftly.

3. Rest Your Foot On The Clutch Pedal 

Resting your foot on the clutch pedal would cause the clutch to engage only partially and hence result in slippage. 

This would not only reduce the fuel efficiency due to loss in transmission energy, it would also cause the clutch to wear out prematurely. 

Another component that may get damaged due to this is the throw-out bearing that may contact the diaphragm bearing only partially. Remember to focus on this while driving stick shift cars.

4. Floor The Gas Pedal When Your Engine Is At A Low RPM

Flooring the gas pedal is meant to make the car pick up speed and move faster. However, for that to happen, the car needs to pick enough gas to be able to pick speed and go through the normal shifts. 

Flooring the gas pedal while at low RPM is bad for the car. It’s unhealthy for your engine. Rather than flooring it while you’re in 5th gear, just downshift! If you don’t, it will cause major problems for you in the long run.

5. Rest Your Foot On The Clutch When Driving

The clutch aids in picking the right gear for the right speed gain. Most people have a tendency of keeping their foot resting on the clutch pedal as the car moves so that they don’t have to move their leg at the point of gear change. 

This is wrong. It will wear out your clutch. Resting your foot on the clutch is a bad habit to get into, so try and avoid it as much as possible.

6. Use Clutch Bite Point To Hold On An Incline 

While on an incline, many people release the clutch until the bite point and feather the throttle to stay steady on the incline and keep the car rolling backward. 

This would result in the great wear of the friction material of the clutch and you would need to replace it prematurely. 

Cars with the hill hold feature tend to hold the car for about 2-3 seconds after the driver releases the brake pedal.

     SEE MORE:

7. Use Incorrect Gear To Gain Speed

driving manual car tips
You should go through the gears progressively to gain speed. (Photo: Car From Japan)

The top gear of your car would let you cruise at higher speed at low engine RPM and thereby save fuel. However, to gain speed you would need to go through the gears progressively to prevent the engine from undue strain. 

You may strain the engine in two ways, first, if you might be using a lower gear at a higher car speed causing the engine to reach the red line. It’s better to progress to a higher gear before reaching the red line or when the gear indicator tells you to do so.

8. Keep Your Car In Gear When You Are At A Stop Light

For most city dwellers, there will be an average of traffic stops for every 1 km in the city center. 

Keeping your gears engaged while at the traffic lights affects the car since the gear is engaged and the vehicle isn’t moving. Your clutch will suffer from unnecessary wear and tear. 

When you put your car in neutral at a stop light, you’re lessening the general wear on your clutch.

9. Shift Without Engaging The Clutch

The clutch disengages the engine from the transmission every time you push the pedal. The clutch unit is the friction disc that is used to transmit power from the engine to the transmission. 

So to shift gears, you have to disconnect the engine from the trans so you can shift. Shifting gears without engaging the clutch not only damages the transmission system but has dire consequences on the engines as well.

10. Brake Without Your Clutch

The clutch helps in gear engagement. It is also important when toning down greats to stop. When braking, do not disengage the clutch until the very end. 

By keeping the motor engaged for as long as possible in a break maneuver, you use as much of the natural resistance of the car as possible, creating a shorter stopping distance and reduced wear on your brakes.

Check out this video from Modern Muscle to get more information on things you should NEVER do in a manual transmission car!

Final Verdict

We can say the ultimate test of a “real man” is to drive a stick (a manual transmission car). The art of driving a manual transmission car in an era where automatic cars are very popular is critical. 

Good reasonably priced manual cars that can be a thrill for this kind of experience are available in our used cars stock. And the information above was 10 bad habits that you should avoid while driving manual cars, some notes about stick shift cars as well. 

If you want to discover more about car maintenance, let’s follow us to check daily articles, it would satisfy your demands.

Tsukasa Azuma
Tsukasa Azuma
Tsukasa Azuma is an awesome car blogger of Car From Japan. He owns a car repair shop at downtown Osaka, and he put all that experience to good use in his sharing posts. Tsukasa’s blog is one of the best resources for information about keeping your favorite imported car running smoothly. Moreover, because of being passionate to learn about the recent happenings in auto industry, he doesn’t only provide great car maintenance tips, he also always updates latest trends in among car brands and share them in his own interesting viewpoint.
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116 COMMENTS

  1. I can attest to all these points. But some of us are in a hurry to go I don’t know where, and we fall into all these traps. Apologies to my EP82, I am guilty of all these at some point or the other.

  2. I just got a manual car. Thanks for the advice about not keeping your car in gear when you are at a stop light. Hopefully, I can also find some discount transmission parts so that I can repair my car.

  16. I do consider all of the ideas you have offered for your post. They’re really convincing and can certainly work. Nonetheless, the posts are very short for starters. May just you please extend them a bit from subsequent time? Thanks for the post.

  27. Hi, I like to ask regarding the 2nd tip, how to hold on the hill to avoid rolling back while on the road and to avoid hitting another car at the back, what I mean is that while you are in the middle of a cue of cars

  29. Hi,I check your blogs named “Things you should never do if you are using a manual car” regularly.Your story-telling style is awesome, keep doing what you’re doing! And you can look our website about تحميل اغانى.

  30. Thanks for keeping us informed about taking care of a manual car. To my question, at what mileage does one know that a car’s engine has outlived its usefulness?

  33. That’s great I’ve got a mark ll manual gearbox but I just changed it from auto is there any problem with this? I love manual cars but I like mark ll

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  62. This information has for real widened my understanding in dealing with the manual transmission vehicles and I found my self guilty of these points somewhere.
    I will be grateful if you send this information and more of the like to my mail.
    Thanks.

  63. How do you go about a manual car on a uphill without using a clutch, I thought it’s important for hill balancing purpose?

  65. Iam guilty on the most of the points. I feel the breaking the while disengaging the engine by shitting the lever into neutral stops the car much faster than when the engine is in gear.

  66. I’ve learnt somethings from this article I never knew and practised wrongly. Thank you. It really is an art and thrill driving a manual car. I urge all men to drive manual!

  67. I have messed up big time. I feel so bad for my 99 toyota camry ce at 185,502 miles.
    at this point i have recently start to hear my Camry make some sounds upon start up for like 3 minutes. and i never warmed my car up these past 2 winters and it gets down to 45F degrees out here in Las Vegas. im so disapointed in myself. i spend all this time and money in the stupid rims and stupid audio when really if i love my car as much as i say i do i should have researched this long ago, obeyed what my dad and uncles said about warming up in this season. And my idiot self has a routine to switch on neatral every time i take the I-15 S on the exit to my house going like 70 like a wannabe manual driver who cant even drive one. i drive an automatic. My father passed me this car when i was like 17 and im 20 now but i have only had the camry to myself fully the last 2 years when i moved out. such a shame.

  71. It was very informative when you said that resting the foot on the clutch with cause decreased fuel efficiency and premature wear out because it will cause slipping. My sister mentioned once that it was “comfy” when she rested her feet on the brake pedals, so I have a feeling that she has the tendency to do this all over again. Perhaps, enrolling her in a driving class before giving her a car will help her realize the dos and don’ts. Thanks.

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