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.