Rev up your engines, today I'm going to show you 5 things you should
never do in a manual transmission car if you want it to last,
now the first thing is, don't down shift all the time, from 4th to
3rd to 2nd to 1st like a race car driver, now race car drivers drive that way for a
reason, they have a limited power band,
lets say the power band is 8,000 RPMs, they always want to keep the engine about
8,000 RPMs, so if they are slowing down they'll put it
in the next slower gear or the next lower gear until they get to the maximum power band
and then they keep shifting to keep it in the power band,
but if you're just driving normally you don't need to do that,
your going to wear out the engine and the transmission faster,
and lets face it, brakes are a lot cheaper than clutches,
of course in an emergency situation, sure down shift to a lower gear, slam the
brakes on, that will stop the car the fastest, but for
normal driving, down shifting isn't a smart thing to do if
you want things to last, now the next thing not to do is,
don't drive down the road riding the clutch with your foot on the clutch the whole time
your driving, have your foot on the clutch, pick it up,
and then when your done, put it to the side, do not drive with your foot on the clutch
or you will wear it out, I had a customer years ago with a standard
transmission BMW, he kept wearing the clutches out and I thought,
I wonder why he's wearing the clutches out so I said lets go for a ride,
so we went for a ride, so I said to him, why do you have one foot
on the clutch, and one foot on the gas all the time,
he said, well the driver instructors told me to do that, have one foot on the clutch
and one foot on the gas, I said that person is an idiot, don't listen
to him, do not ride the clutch,
now the next thing not to do is, if your parking on a hill,
don't just shut the car off, and then put it in gear and walk away,
I've seen more cars roll down hill because they either came out of gear,
or the engine wasn't strong enough to hold it and it just started slowly rolling backwards,
what you want to do is have one foot on the clutch pushed down,
one on the brake, then put it in gear, and pull the emergency brake on,
then when you shut the car off, guess what, it's not going to roll anywhere,
now modern clutches need very little maintenance, but you don't want to forget the tiny bit
of maintenance that a modern clutch system needs,
now when I was a kid, most clutches were manually adjustable, like my motorcycle here,
you want to have about a quarter inch of play before it starts to grab,
that was just adjusted by turning the star adjuster, as they wear, they actually got
tighter and you would have to loosen them up a little,
it was a very simple thing and if you have a car like that, you would adjust it every
once in a while when it would get too tight, but most modern vehicles use hydraulic clutches
with brake fluid in them, you don't need to adjust anything, they adjust
themselves, but the fluid does get dirty over time,
so you want to change the fluid and flush it out every 2,3, or 4 years,
it's no big deal to do, but if you don't, dirty fluid inside can ruin the seals,
and some of these clutch systems cost a lot of money to change the master of slave cylinder,
for example, some Ford pick up trucks with standard transmissions, the slave cylinder
is built inside the housing, so you have to pull the transmission off to
change the slave cylinder, it can cost you well over a thousand dollars,
so you want to keep the fluid clean and it's no big deal flushing it out every 2,3, or
4 years, it's not that hard to do, you can just a turkey baster to suck it out
and then bleed the bottom part, now the last thing I'm going to talk about
is clutch replacement, realize clutches wear out and you have to replace them,
but when they do wear out, and the clutch disc gets thin, just don't replace the clutch
disc, get the whole kit with all the parts,
when a clutch disc gets thin it will start to slip, then you need to change it,
but don't just buy the disc, you have to pull the transmission off, it's a big job,
get a clutch set that has all the clutch parts in it,
the disc, the plate, throw out bearings, and this one, it's even got a nice alignment tool
so you can align it and fit it in right, it's foolish to pull a transmission of a car
and guess that they other parts will last for a lot longer,
change everything then you don't have to think about it for a long time,
so now you know how to make your manual transmission car last as long as possible, and serve you
many years without having the hassle of rebuilding that an automatic transmission often needs,
so if you never want to miss another one of my new car repair videos, remember to ring
that bell!