How To Drive Stick (Part Two)

I went into it a little bit before, but I wanted to provide a more thorough guide to driving stick for anyone who may want to pick up this dying art. I can’t imagine my life without this skill and encourage everyone to try to learn. You never know when the opportunity might arise for you to need to know how to drive a stick. It’s just so good to know.

First, some basics. You’re using three pedals when you drive stick, which are (left to right) the clutch, the brake, and the gas. You want the car to be in gear when you are driving. The car is only in neutral when you are slowing or stopping. There are two things that need to happen to make it go into gear. You need to select the correct gear in the gearshift, and you also need to let off of the clutch and press the gas pedal as you are shifting. The clutch only needs to be engaged for the act of shifting. Your left foot should be resting on the floor of the car next to the clutch pedal when it is not being used to shift.

With the car off, sit and use your right hand to play with the gearshift. Get a sense of how the shifter feels when it’s in and out of gear. Jiggle the stick — it will be loose when it’s in neutral, and firm when it’s in gear. Selecting which gear you need is easy, and it’s based on RPMs. You should be revving at 1500–3000 RPM on the regular. If you’re outside this range, your gear is too high or too low.

On my car, it’s easiest to translate RPMs into approximate speed ranges:

• 1st gear: 0–10 MPH
• 2nd gear: 11–22 MPH
• 3rd gear: 23–35 MPH
• 4th gear: 36–45 MPH
• 5th gear: 45–55 MPH
• 6th gear: 55+ MPH

(Each car’s ranges will be different depending on a number of things, including the number of gears the car has.)

But there’s give in this. I can be in 6th gear going 50 MPH, and I can also be in 4th gear at 30 MPH. Your RPMs will just be lower. The trick is to not make the RPMs too low, though, or the car will be underpowered and difficult to drive. 4th gear at 15 MPH would not work. And you can do serious damage to your engine if you run your RPMs too high, so be very, very careful not to accidentally put your car in 1st gear when you’re moving at 50 MPH. The worst that can happen if you run them too low is that you will stall. Not terrific for your engine, but it won’t kill you, either.

The hardest part of driving stick is learning how to engage the clutch. It will take practice to get right. The best advice I have for it is to be really, really steady and gradual when you let off the clutch. Driving stick is this constant action:

• Driving along in gear; need to shift
• Let off gas and engage clutch — car is in neutral now, select your gear according to speed — and keep it engaged
• Let off clutch slowly while simultaneously re-engaging the gas pedal — do this until the gear catches and then remove your left foot from the clutch and place it on the floor next to the clutch, all while keeping the gas pedal going

You just repeat this process over and over as you shift along. And because I’m lazy, I throw the car into neutral any chance I get. If I’m slowing or stopping, I’m in neutral. Technically you should stay in gear in case you need to be in gear to avert a sudden object in the road or something of that nature. But I’ve experienced no peril from driving the way I do, so I can recommend the “when in doubt, neutral” approach. Or maybe more accurately: clutch, then neutral.

There are finer details as well, such as attempting to start from a dead stop on a steep hill. Due to the force of gravity, your car will roll backward once you let off the brake to engage the clutch/gas. As such, you need to apply an additional brake — the emergency brake — when getting into 1st gear. This provides the leverage your car needs against the force of gravity to get going from a dead stop. Yes, you will (momentarily) be pressing on the gas with the brake engaged. Let off the emergency brake once you have enough gas and you’re in gear. Luckily, many newer stick shifts have a built-in mechanism that automatically triggers the emergency brake if the hill is steep enough so that you do not have to do this process manually.

It’s really quite simple. It took me about a week to get the hang of it. I have no idea if I articulated it with any clarity whatsoever, but that’s my best attempt.