[0:00] Today is the day you learn how to drive a manual transmission vehicle. Get inside your car and acquaint yourself with the two main differences that you're going to notice. The first is there's an extra pedal. So, we have the brake, we have the throttle, and now this is the clutch pedal. And here, rather than putting a car from park to drive to reverse and so on, you actually choose the individual gear. So, there are multiple gears that will help you go forward. And here we can see the H
[0:27] pattern is demonstrated here. first, second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth. Most cars are like this. Although there are some vehicles with a dog like transmission where the first gear is actually down here, but most cars are going to be just like this. Those are all your forward moving gears. And we have R for reverse. Now, different vehicles are going to have a different way of getting to reverse. In this Mazda Miata, we push down, left, and up, and that's how we get to reverse. Now,
[0:55] there's most vehicles are going to have a lockout like this is what it's called. And sometimes they have a collar here that you lift up to get into reverse. Sometimes you go to the right and down or right and up. In BMWs, you just push really hard. Every vehicle is a little bit different. But when it comes to the pedal box, they're all the same. That pedal on the left is going to be your clutch. Now, there is sometimes a fourth pedal out here, which is actually your
[1:16] parking brake. But my car here has a hand operated parking brake there. So, back to the clutch. What does this third pedal do? Your engine is spinning and it's spinning a flywheel. This flywheel is spinning in place and it's taking your potential and chemical energy from the fuel, combusting it, fire, boom, explosions, and it's creating this kinetic energy. Right? This flywheel is spinning. You then have a clutch and that's what this pedal is is working on. That clutch connects with the flywheel
[1:47] and that clutch is attached to the transmission. The transmission then goes back to the wheels through a differential and that's what actually gives us the forward motion. So, when we're pushing in this clutch pedal, all you need to know is that we're disconnecting the engine from the transmission. Now, normally in an automatic vehicle, you would just put your foot on the brake and press start. But you'll notice that the car doesn't actually start. That's because manual
[2:09] transmission vehicles have a clutch interlock. And what that means is that you need to actually depress the clutch pedal and then you can start the car. The reason being that if you're actually in gear when you start the car and your clutch is your clutch pedal is not fully depressed, then the car can lurch forward and it's not an ideal situation. So, I'm actually going to turn the car off and show you how to start the car properly. Cuz normally when you get on
[2:36] the car, it's going to look something like this. The car is usually placed into a gear and the parking brake is enabled. The reason being that the parking brake is mainly what's holding your car in place, but you put it in first gear just in case this fails, which is rare, but it does happen. So that the transmission, you know, the engine off and the transmission being in gear, it's going to try to roll forward, but since the engine doesn't want to spin, the car will generally stay in
[2:59] place unless you're on a very steep incline or decline. In an automatic transmission vehicle, you put it into P and there's a parking prawl. It's a different system here. So, the first thing you want to do when starting your manual transmission vehicle, foot on the brake, foot all the way down on the clutch. And keep in mind, the clutch is different than the throttle in that the throttle and the brake, we kind of press it a little bit here and there if we want to slow down a little bit or speed
[3:21] up a little bit. The clutch, you go all the way in and all the way out. So, it's going to go all the way in and then we're going to take our gear selector and put it into neutral. Now, if it's in the middle, that's how you know you're in neutral. You can actually wiggle it left and right. If you're in first or in any gear really, you won't be able to really wiggle it because it's going to be in that gate. So, we go into neutral, make sure it's in neutral by doing a
[3:43] little wiggle, and turn the car on. Now, I can let go of the clutch. And even though the engine is spinning, the rear wheels are not moving. Why is that? Simply because we're in neutral. We're not in any gear. So, even though my foot is not on the clutch pedal, we're not going anywhere because we're in neutral. The engine is just spinning freely and it's not connected to the wheels directly. Then we're going to turn off the parking brake, which may be an electronic button
[4:10] for you placed in different positions. A little P button. And now the hardest part of driving stick, but the part that you're going to tackle today is just getting moving without stalling. So, let me show you what a stall looks like. We're going to go into gear. The car tries to lurch forward. I have my foot on the brake and the engine stalled. Not a big deal. I'm going to go back into neutral, foot on the clutch, start the car again. So, we're going to want to avoid that. The way that happens
[4:38] is number one, you depress the clutch while you're in gear and your foot is on the brake. But number two, and more commonly is when you're trying to start from a stop. You have to, it's almost like a musical instrument. You have to play play this balancing game with the engine, with the machine, such that you have a little bit of give and take, and the car slowly starts to move. So, what I want you to do is lift your foot off the brake. And by the way, you should be
[5:05] doing this in a parking lot if that isn't already obvious. Don't do this on a moving road, right? And you're going to slowly let go of the clutch until you see the car start to move and then you can fully remove it and now you're rolling. That is literally the hardest part of driving stick. Now, if you want to stop, foot on the brake and clutch in. Whenever you're panicking, whenever you need to stop, remember, foot on the brake is the more important thing because worst case scenario,
[5:37] if I'm moving and I just put my foot on the brake and I don't clutch in, I just stall the engine. Not a big deal. But what you should do is put your foot on the brake and clutch in at the same time if you're coming to a complete stop. So, I'm going to start the car again, put into neutral, and I want you to just repeat this multiple times in your parking lot. You're going to clutch in, go to first, foot off the brake, and slowly let off until you find that engagement point where the car starts
[6:04] moving forward, and then you can fully lift off. Our right foot is not yet touching the throttle. Do this multiple times. Find that engagement point, get comfortable with it. Then, what we're going to do is add a little bit of throttle. Now, keep in mind there's a bit of a balancing act here. So, what I don't want you to do as we get started is rev your engine really high and then let go of your clutch because that is going to damage and wear out your clutch at a much more accelerated rate. So,
[6:30] what you want to do is clutch in first, find the engagement point, and give a little bit of gas. The game is actually to give the least amount of gas possible that you don't lug or stall the engine. So stalling, I've already showed you. Lugging is something like this where the engine starts kind of lurching forward and back because you're pushing the engine at too low of an RPM or you're asking for too much load from the engine at too low of an RPM. Now, this is the one and only
[7:05] time when you are driving a manual transmission vehicle where you want to have some slip in the clutch because this is the only time where the car is stopped, right? Starting in first, the engine is spinning, the wheels are stopped, and to get the wheels to spin, we need to have a little bit of slip so that the flywheel and clutch can get to the same speed. So, there needs to be a little bit of this give and take, this little bit of slip until you fully let
[7:27] go of the clutch. And now everything is connected fully with no slip, no um no loss of energy there. So keep doing that multiple times until it feels more natural. We're only doing first gear right now. Remember to stop, brake, and clutch at the same time. Push it into neutral. Clutch in first. Just like that. Nice and easy. Now, once you're feeling comfortable with that, let's shift into second. Here's the good news. If you have already been able to move in first,
[8:04] that's literally the hardest part. After this, it is way easier. And you're not going to stall while you're moving. As you go faster, you need to go into higher gears. So, just like when you're riding a bicycle, when you're going up a steep hill or you're going very slow, you have a low gear like one in this instance. And when you're going very fast, you're going downhill or going as quickly as you can, you go into a higher gear, like six on the highway, as an
[8:25] example. So, when we're shifting between gears, we're going to clutch in and then pull the gear shift to the next gear and then clutch out with the key the key distinction that we're going to let go of the throttle. When you're shifting up between gears from first to second, second to third, third to fourth, and so on, you should never have your right foot on the throttle. You should always let go of the throttle and then push in the clutch all the way. So, we're going to get back into first.
[8:56] Build a little bit of speed. And now we get into second. Clutch in. Let go of the throttle. Pull down. Clutch out. And there we go. You're now in second. And every other gear follows the same mechanism. I'm approaching a speed bump. Brake. I'm going to clutch in. Go into first.
[9:19] And we're going to do that again. Going to first. Clutch in. Pull back. Go into second. Now, third is a little bit trickier because now we're having to go horizontal with the gear shift. But there's a centering spring here that's going to pull the gear shift towards the middle. So, as I just push this upward, look what happens. It goes to the center and straight forward is now third. You want to be careful here. Don't be forcing it too much in one direction. Because if you're in second,
[9:51] let's say you're in second and pretend we're moving and you want to shift into third. If you're like, "Oh, third is a little bit that way. Let me go all the way there." You're going to go into fifth. And when you go into fifth, now your revs are going to be way too low. You're going to lug the engine, possibly stall. And if you go too much to the left and you're not letting the the actual gear shift recenter itself, then you're going to go into first. And if you are pushing the car hard going to
[10:14] red line and you shift from second to first, that's a very bad thing called a money shift. The reason it's called a money shift is that it costs a lot of money because you're going to need to replace your entire engine. So keep in mind the centering spring on cars, sometimes it can be a little worn down, not doing its thing. So you want to be patient with the car and don't rush or force anything. You need to have mechanical sympathy and you need to listen to the rhythm of
[10:37] the car cuz it'll tell you how fast it wants to shift. When you drive an Audi R8, as an example, it has a light flywheel and the revs drop very rapidly. In this Miata, it doesn't drop so rapidly. I can take it nice and easy between gears. So, we're going to shift up into third one more time. Clutch into first. There we go. Clutch in. Let go of the throttle. Pull back into second. Clutch out. Now we're in second. Build the speed. Same thing again. Clutch in. Let it fall to the
[11:06] center. Go into third and out. When you're first doing this, do it nice and slow. And your actual revs may not always be as smooth. That will come with time. Do not rush things because when there's a lot of stuff going on as you get more comfortable driving stick, you will be much smoother. And what you want to do is actually have your tachometer, which tells you the engine revs, how fast it's spinning, to always be smooth. Never never any jerky action. So, as an
[11:34] example, if I go from first, I'm going to do a jerky right now. First to second, I'm gonna wait too long. See that jerk? Not good. What you want to do is actually be smooth. So here, second, it just slowly falls right to place. And that's about getting into a rhythm with the car and understanding what the car is telling you and giving it that mechanical sympathy, that understanding, again, like a musical instrument.
[12:07] So, that's upshifting. Let's also briefly cover reverse. It's the same thing as going into first. So, clutch in. And the lockout, remember, is pushing down. So, I'm going to push down, left, and up. My reverse camera is on. And then, same thing. You're going to start with just letting go of the clutch. Get used to that a few times, come to a stop, go back to neutral. Practice that multiple times. And then eventually, you're going to start adding gas like so. Now, a few bad habits I want you to
[12:36] avoid. Number one, do not touch the gear selector unless you're actually shifting gears. A lot of people will ride drive like this. They think it's cool. No, you're actually wearing out the shift forks. Don't do that. And you want to be at 9 and three with your hands anyways on the steering wheel. The other bad habit is called riding the clutch. So, you you let it slip and you keep slipping even though you're moving. That's not good. That's going to wear out your clutch faster. Another one is
[13:01] being fully depressed on the clutch when you're stopping at a light or at a stop sign. That's not good either because this is bad for your throwout bearing. You want to go into neutral, let your foot off the clutch. That's a better habit for your car and for your car's longevity. So, the hardest part, I promise, was just getting started from a stop. Now, the last thing I want to talk about is how to downshift from a higher gear to a lower gear. When we upshift, going from
[13:27] a lower gear to a higher gear, you'll notice that the revs naturally drop, right? So, I I rev up and then I go to second, I let clutch out and it's naturally lower, and I rev up, clutch in, and so on. But if I downshift, look, the revs go up and up again. So, ignore the footwork there. Those we're going to get to what those techniques are. But what I want you to first start doing when you are downshifting is just slowly let off the clutch. Because if I go here into second
[13:59] into third and I slowly let off the clutch, there's going to be a little bit of slip. It's going to bring that speed up and it's smooth. But then what happens if I let's get up to third. If I quickly let off the clutch, it's going to be jerky and cause more wear and tear on my clutch. Get that buck. Not good. want to avoid that. You always want to be smooth. So, what you do is remember how I was saying earlier when you upshift, you never actually want your uh right foot on the
[14:31] throttle. When you downshift, you're going to do a little blip, little jab of the throttle to get the revs up. And that way, when your clutch is in, when you're in gear, you can rev this, right? Even though I'm in gear, my clutch is depressed. The engine and the wheels are not connected. But this is going to let the engine get to the right speed and I'm going to match that the flywheel and the clutch when they come together it's nice and smooth. So the way you do that
[14:54] is just a brief jab with the throttle and each car is going to be a little bit different. It's going to, you know, there's a bit of a learning curve, but that's okay. You're not going to be smooth initially. So here I'm going to clutch in down into second. Now let's do that again. Going to go into third and I'm going to clutch in. go into second and blip at the same time. Just like that. We can do that from fourth, going into third, and then again going into second.
[15:33] Now, the question that naturally arises, what do you do if you want to slow down and downshift? Let's say you're approaching a corner and you're going too fast. ask you to slow down a little bit. And as you slow down, you want to get into the right gear because your engine operates between certain RPMs. It's not an electric vehicle that has a one-speed transmission. There are six speeds in this transmission if you're not counting reverse. [Music] Then we introduce heel toe. And all that
[16:04] is, it sounds so complicated. It's a very simple thing. It's just pressing the brakes. And just like we did the rev match before, same exact movement, but you're just using the right side of your foot or kind of the heel, not really. Just jabbing it like that. Now, some people prefer actually rolling like this. I personally don't like that because what happens if your foot slips off the brake? That's a totally valid uh technique, and many people do it without issue. I've always felt a little bit
[16:31] uncomfortable. I just like to do this. So, we're going to break and then jab the throttle just like that. to rep match at the same time. And to show you this, we're going to get out on the street so we can be at speed, which is when you're actually going to be doing your heel toe downs. [Music]
[16:59] That's just a regular match. Now a heel toe. [Music] Upshift into third. Upshift into fourth. Upshift into fifth. And now the downshift rev match. I'm not going to slow down. I'm not going to be on the brakes. Just going to do a regular rev match. That's fourth. That's third.
[17:31] Now, there are a couple advanced techniques that we're going to cover for those that want to know how to be the top 1% of manual transmission drivers, which is double clutching. Double clutching is not necessary in modern vehicles. In fact, just about every modern vehicle except for semi-truckss is going to have synchronizers or synchros in your transmission. So, there's an input shaft that needs to get spun up to match this the speed of all the other components in the transmission.
[18:02] And synchros, their job is to actually synchronize the input shaft. However, if you're driving an older vehicle that doesn't have synchros or synchros are failing, like when I was driving my buddy Fenton from the ZY Green YouTube channel, his 1991 Acura NSX, the Synchros were failing. So, I had to double clutch when I was driving it. Now, double clutching is used when you are downshifting. So, let's say, let's say I was in fourth and I want to go into third. I would clutch in, go into
[18:32] neutral, clutch out, flip the throttle, clutch in again, and then go into third. So, there's an extra step. Normally, normally you would just go from fourth to third and let go of the clutch. I'm not going to do that right now because I'll stall. And, um, that would be a normal downshift. a double clutch is you stop in neutral very briefly, very quickly and then you go into the next lower gear and that allows you yourself to get that input shaft up to speed and
[19:01] it reduces the load on the synchros. This is an optional thing, not necessary. So, we're going to go up into fourth and out to double clutch. Just like that and into second just like that. That wasn't the cleanest one. I under revved it ever so slightly.
[19:26] I will show you a double clutch heel toe. But I first want to show you how do you start a car when you're on an incline like this. This is one thing that a lot of manual drivers really fear, right? Because if you're slow and new to driving a manual, you go into first, you let go of this. And there we go. Normally you start rolling back and that's scary. I guess my Mazda Miata has automatic uh hill stop which many cars like my Scion FRS that I learned how to drive stick on did not. So what you do
[19:59] is you actually engage your parking brake. And now if you let go of the brake, your car is not going to roll back. You clutch in, get into first. You take your time and then get to your engagement point nice and slow. Give it a little bit of gas. You'll feel the car want to pull. And at that moment, you're gonna let go of the parking brake and the car is going to roll forward without rolling back at all. Simple as that. Practice that. And especially on these steeper inclines, it's going to be a
[20:27] very helpful technique. However, over time, as you get used to your car, you're going to be able to just clutch in and very quickly get going, and you'll roll back maybe half an inch or an inch. It's going to be a very quick process. Just remember that each car has a different engagement point with the clutch. All right. So, a double clutch heel toe is the single most advanced technique in driving a manual transmission. And that's where you do that. It is a heel toe and a double
[20:55] clutch at the same time. It is optional. It is not necessary. If your synchros are failing or you don't have synchros and you want a heel toe at the same time, that is the only time you need to do it. But if you enjoy just perfecting a craft like I do, then maybe you'll want to do it anyway.
[21:16] Because I think what you'll find is the game of trying to be smoother and better as a manual transmission driver is a lot of the fun. With automatic vehicles, there's no fun in accelerating or braking. But when you drive a manual transmission vehicle, it's all up to you. And you'll find this joy as you become a better driver. You become smoother. You'll even start playing an internal game where you want to, let's say you're driving at night and people aren't able
[21:43] to see down here. You want the person to be surprised that the car is even a manual transmission. You want to be so smooth that they think it's an automatic vehicle. So remember, at a stoplight, I'm going to clutch in, go into neutral, and my foot is not on the clutch pedal. And then when it's my turn to go, clutch in first, and just like that.
[22:09] As you slow down to a red light, you want to downshift so that if you you can use engine braking to slow you down. As the engine goes to higher revs, there's more resistance and it's going to slowly bring me down to speed without me having to use the brake pedal. I don't want to be driving at a high speed. Like, I don't want to go around driving at 4,000 RPM. It's wasting extra fuel. It's pushing the engine harder than I need to. So, each car is going to have a
[22:38] different operating range, and you just again need to listen to the car. So, fourth, we're going to do double clutch, gel toe. Third, second, first. You should only go into first if you're at a stop or a near stop and you're just doing a regular clutch in or if you have done a double clutch. You should never be pushing a car past, I don't know, 5 10 m an hour and trying to force it into first. It's very hard on the transmission. Yes, the synchros are working, but they're working overtime
[23:15] because the gear ratios are so aggressive in first gear. Do not do that. I see a lot of people do that on YouTube. Big no. And there you have it, my friends. That's how to drive stick shift. Let me know if you have any questions with a comment down below.