5 Things You Shouldn’t Do When Driving A Manual Transmission Car

As it stands now and with the current trend in car technology, majority of drivers will give you 1001 reasons why automatic cars are better than manual cars. However, there are different strokes for different folks; some petrol heads still stick to the good old manual transmission. They just want to be in control. I’m one of them.

You may have been unintentionally messing up your transmission with the way you handle it. Be it as it may, I’m here to help you in my own little way.

Relax, read, assimilate and put it to practice.

Here are 5 things you shouldn’t do if you drive manual transmission.

1. Do not leave your car in gear when you have no intention to move:

You might be wondering why on earth you shouldn’t do this. It is very simple.

It is bad to do so because when you leave it engaged in a gear, your clutch will suffer from unnecessary wear and tear.

When the clutch is depressed, three main parts of the clutch press against the other – the spring, the bearing, and the diaphragm. This will gradually wear out.

So, next time you’re warming your car, at the stop light, have no intention of moving ASAP when the engine is cranked, just move the gear lever to the Neutral position in order not to overwork or stress your clutch.

2. Do not rest you hand on the gear lever:

All those times you have been forming gangster, cruising your car with one arm on the steering and the other comfortably resting on the lever, you have been getting it all wrong.

This one is particularly a bit surprising, but it is true. It is bad.

The weight of your arm can actually cause the parts responsible for gear shifting to rub against each other. This wears out your selector fork (transaxle shift forks). This on the long run might make your car start jumping out of gear.

Do your gear shift a favour and take back your hand back to the steering wheel. It is also a good driving habit to leave both hands on the wheel for proper control.

3. Do not floor you throttle/gas pedal when your engine is at low RPM:

Behind the scene, a lot is happening in a manual transmission. Flooring your throttle at a low RPM is unhealthy to the engine. By so doing, you tell the engine to accelerate as hard as it can. This brings much stress to the engine; it makes the engine work really hard.

Instead of flooring the throttle at a very low RPM, just downshift – move to a lower gear.

4. Do not use the clutch to hold your car on a hill:

I have heard many people call this ‘clutch engagement’. I don’t know how it came to be anyway.

This is the habit of using the clutch and throttle simultaneously so it could act as brake to avoid rolling back when in a hilly terrain.

When you do this, you are actually burning out the friction material on your clutch disk. Avoid this.

Use the conventional break and the handbrake (E-brake) in worst case scenarios.

5. Do not rest your foot on the clutch:

This makes your clutch not to be fully engaged. It causes wearing out of the clutch. It might also cause you car not to put down full engine power. It is called riding-the-clutch.

Any lover of manual transmission in the house? Don’t forget to tell us a thing or two in the comment section.

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Good luck and shift safely!