stick shift lessons damage?

We may earn a small commission from affiliate links and paid advertisements. Terms

hondasaurus

Member
so how bad do you think the damage could be for teaching someone to drive a manual tran/stick shift vehicle?
i'm thinking clutch riding and flywheel shuddering at revs that are too low.
 
Shouldn't be bad unless they drive like that for a while or actually overheat the clutch. I taught two, maybe three, people how to drive standard in my old Accord and when the clutch was pulled, it was perfectly fine. The clutch had probably only ~30,000mi on it though
 
taught 4 w/ my 240sx and 200sx turbo. maybe 20-40 min lessons. (2 girls, 2 16 yr old guys)
taught one (girl) w/ crx si last night. some gear grinding at beginning. lesson last night was 70 min, kina long.
shes bad so i'm kina worrying about that and more (if any) lessons. plus my car has 207k and needs some maintenance.
girls are notorious clutch riders. i bought a turbo elcipse from a girl and clutched burned out couple weeks later, only 36k miles. it seems my older bro (who ended up going thru clutches and trannies) and i each learned in 10-15 min, maybe not the norm. maybe i'm a bad teacher.
 
Last edited:
yeah I am going to try and teach a friend on my hatch the clutch is really wore out anyways so I imagine it might be a little hard.....I was planning on replacing the clutch anyway so I figured it would be best after my friend learned
 
yeah the crashing is a worry so parking lot only til they get to a certain level. esp w/ no power steering and one bad caliper and a worn suspension (body roll throws 'em off). after my lil bro learned on a car the clutch was softer and the tranny clunkier.
makes me wonder how much damage they can do in 30 min lesson...
 
Last edited:
I learned on my integra. I think i was both lucky and not so to learn on this car and setup. A b16 with the close ratio'd gearing of the J1 tranny plus a short throw shifter with a stage 1 clutch. Little advanced for a first time but also the short throw made it nice. Ive had a few others try my car for a bit and it was a little unnerving at times especially with not letting out the clutch fast enough once they are moving. If you instruct them well with patience and in a safe place (empty parking lot or some long straight barren roads) you should be ok. Ifyou suspect any damage could be happening stop. I had to show them a few times myself before i gave them the driver seat.

Funny thing is, is that im so used to this car that any other car especially a stock manual car, i cant drive well. I need a short throw at the least. Takes me a bit to get used to it.
 
Funny thing is, is that im so used to this car that any other car especially a stock manual car, i cant drive well. I need a short throw at the least. Takes me a bit to get used to it.
Yeah same with me....my clutch is slipping pretty bad so when I get into a car where the clutch would grab it was a lot different
 
I thought i had a tranny problem where (usually going in second) it will not grind but skim off, it could just be me in and not pressing in the clutch completely but i swear i did, i think i need a clutch cable adjustment since the tranny is fairly new.

Make sure they dont grind too much. My one friend managed to make the tranny make a huge loud bang while downshifting. Almost like going from 5th to 2nd really fast while dumping the clutch and then pressing it down again and correcting. Poor thing didnt know what to do :(.... i mean the tranny not my friend. I told him to get out after that one.
 
learning on a stage two clutch is really easy, my girl didnt stall once when she learned on it, although she had alot of fun frying my tires with 4000rpm clutch drops:(, then flooring it!:eek: Lets just say she's a work in progress. lol
 
Thats what scares me into not letting someone learn on my tranny...haha that sounds kinda dirty
 
i just close my eyes and praise the honda gods for good engineering! haha. I have alot of faith in hondas ive beat the shit out of three of them now and never had any tranny or clutch problems. but maybe ive been lucky.:)
 
i was about to get a short-throw shifter myself but was putting it off til i had taught a couple ppl.

this is the 5th person i've taught and she's just not getting it, her lesson is over. my car can't take the abuse. after her the clutch felt softer. and i really don't want my flywheel eaten from shuddering at low revs. she couldn't even keep track of the rpm by sight, sound, or feel-that will just lead to stalling or red-lining the engine.
maybe the first 4 i taught had more fear in them of breaking my car since they were my gf, gf friend, and gf's 2 bros.
maybe more ppl are right-footed so working the clutch is tough. i've had upgraded clutches and it seems like that would be even harder to learn on.
can u imagine teaching someone and your clutch or something goes out..
 
I need to butt in. I see u all talk about clutch and flywheel damage, but what would the damage be on killing the car? This seems to be my biggest problem when i teach people how to drive stick.
 
what do you mean 'but what would the damage be on killing the car?'
like crashing it? stalling it?
i'm also thinking high revving the engine, having permanent grinds in tranny gears.
 
I think he means killing it by releasing the clutch before you have enough rpm built up like from a stop light???
 
exactly. even in parking lots. the people i seem to teach (even after showing and giving them all the pointers u can)rev up to high and r moving slow so they think thare fine and let go of the clutch. making one sudden stop. the kind u want to flip out on. what type of damage does this do to my car?
 
Back
Top