Driving a Vehicle with a Manual Transmission

[Ottobon]

Regular road cars are normally not heel and toe-able, not easily at least as the brake and gas pedals are set far apart for safety reasons.

There are aftermarket race pedals or perhaps a mod that brings those two pedals closer together.

its absolutely possible, just need to feel free to use whatever part of your foot possible for the gas, as it has no need to be precise at all in comparison to the brake modulation. The brake modulation is by far the most important part, as i doubt most people can truly brake at the limit let alone brake at the limit while tapping the gas with the edge of their foot. I suppose ABS equipped cars help make it easier, but smoothness is still key, and ABS won't help you there.


with that said, theres no need to heal-toe in a car with good synchros

 

[Hercules286]

NOTE: If you're doing 50km/h and you brake to 0km/h you must press the clutch first and then brake.

WRONG!

Not crashing into things comes first, not stalling your engine is a far second.

What you should do is just not forget to press the clutch after you've started braking. Hopefuly before 1200 RPM. It's not that hard, really.

 

[Samir]

I learned to drive Manual on an OLD Toyota RAV-4 that had a heavy-ass truck plate for a clutch. The owner made a living teach brats like me how to drive stick, so he got this heavy duty clutch installed that could take endless abuse.

Unfortunately, old RAV4's were not especially torquey and I figured I had mastered in 10 hours. Then I drove a Civic, and it was mushy as heck and so torqueless, it was almost impossible not to be smooth.

Then I got into the Mustang, and it's so hard to drive it smoothly I'm at times jerky even now after having done 3,000 miles in it. Heck, forget the clutch, if you're not smooth on the THROTTLE it'll kick you in the back.

I've found that if I'm slow over the friction point, it won't stall at all (great for stop-go traffic actually).

In order to get my left foot used to modulation, I actually forced myself to left-foot brake in my automatic car for a few weeks until I could make stops as smooth with my left as I did with my right.

Oh, and the key to being smooth in this car, IMHO, is the throttle. If you keep the REVs where they need to be, you can be ULTRAFAST on the clutch and not feel like you're shifting at all.