Beginner’s mistakes to avoid when driving a manual car

If you downshift, your car will slow its pace, and you will hear your engine get louder. This is called downshifting and this puts unnecessary stress on your transmission. Doing this repetitively will wear out your manual transmission faster than using your brakes will wear out your brake pads.

While driving people with manual transmissions shift gears a lot, it is important that while shifting, you let go of the clutch completely every time. Riding the clutch means that the driver keeps applying pressure on the clutch or will rest their foot on the clutch pedal. Riding the clutch will wear it out prematurely.

Do be patient, gentle and let the syncro’s do their job; rev matching speeds up the process. Keep your foot off of the clutch pedal if you’re not changing gear. Don’t use much throttle at low rpm’s or you’ll lug the engine; if you want to accelerate then don’t be lazy, downshift.

To put it simply, the stress on the engine is very high while the oil pressure is low. Think about if you are riding a bicycle up a steep hill. If you are in too high of a gear and try to accelerate, it requires a lot of force into the pedals. If you downshift, the force is lower but the pedaling speed is higher. In a car, oil pressure is dependent on speed so low oil pressure compounds the issue.

If you are going forward, the absolute worst thing you could do is shift into reverse. Next to that is shifting in a lazy way without using the clutch properly. If you attempt this, you will hear a nasty grinding noise. Your car is a well-oiled machine; try to operate with it, not against it.

Here’s the golden rule of manual transmissions — shifting begins with the clutch but ends with the gas. With the engine still off, press the clutch to the floor and move the shifter into first gear. Then, release the pedal while slowly pressing down on the gas. If the engine were on and the brakes were disengaged, this would propel the vehicle forward.