In this video we'll be talking about five bad habits

that you may fall into driving a manual transmission vehicle.

And the reason I'm making this video is

because you know behind the scenes

there's a lot of things happening with a manual transmission

that you may not be thinking about

if you don't fully understand how they work.

So we're gonna get into these bad habits and

talk about why exactly you may not want to do them.

So the first one is you shouldn't rest your hand on the gear shift in a manual transmission vehicle

you shouldn't use it as a hand rest instead whenever you need to shift gear, you know do the gear shift

and then take your hand of put it back on the wheel, do the gear shift take your hand off put back on the wheel

if you need to down shift take your hand off put it back on the wheel

you shouldn't be resting your hand on the gear shift

so why shouldn't you rest your hand on the gear shift? well you have too understand whats happening within the transmission

so when you are shifting a gear you have a selector fork and you are pushing that selector fork

up against a rotating collar and you press that collar into the gear that you wanna choose

So what you have happening is you have static object that just moves back and forth rubbing up against this rotating component thats used to select the gear

So you're gonna have a little bit of wear on that selector fork when you do shift gears. But it's not much because it's a very short duration where you pressing up against it

now if you're leaving your hand on the gear shift while it's in gear

what's happening is you could be applying pressure on that selector fork

up against that collar so you've got a rotating component pressing up against

that

selector fork and you can wear out that selector fork and so you don't want

to be doing that. Now if you just put a little bit of a pressure on it if you're

not really touching it much if you're just kind of holding in place because

you're going to you know select another gear next

it's not a huge deal but you should know that putting pressure on it can cause

premature wear of those gear for it's because you're pressing up against the

rotating component and you can even find in owner's manuals it will tell you

not to use the gear shift as a hand rest. now another good reason not to leave

your hand on the gear shift is that it's also just a good idea to have both hands

on the wheel for maximum control especially in any sort of competitive

environment. So moving on to number two

one bad habit is to leave it in gear while you're sitting at a stoplight so

if you come up to a stoplight the best idea instead of just leaving it in gear

take it out of here put it in neutral and let your foot off the clutch

so why should you do this well here is the pressure plate and this is the

diaphragm spring and so this is what's going to be engaging and disengaging

your clutch and so within your transmission this is the throw out

bearing and so when you push in that clutch pedal

what you're doing is you're pushing the throw out bearing up against this

diaphragm spring and you're relieving pressure so that it doesn't clamp down

on that clutch disc

so when you're sitting at a stoplight and you put it in gear

what you're doing is you're pressing this up against it and you can wear out

these throw out bearing so it's unnecessary wear to just have it sitting

there so you can just put it in neutral

let out the clutch and then you know it can sit there and it's not wearing up

against it

now the other thing is when you do have your clutch engaged with it in neutral

you're not gonna have your clutch spinning in there so you know if you did

start to have some clearance issues with your clutch

you could have some premature we're just sitting there with an in gear

rather than engaging it now people will argue hey you know you want to have it

in gear just in case you need to get up and go or whatever but you know there's

plenty of scenarios where there's going to be a car in front of you a car behind

things like that there's no need to just leave it in gear and it doesn't really

take any time to put it into gear it's a very quick thing to do

and the other thing people say it's like hey you know you might get rear-ended

you want to have it in gear so that you know if your foot comes off the clutch

your vehicle stops it's like well you should have your foot on the brake so if

you are going to get rounded your foots are going to be on the break I've had

this happen to me twice

unfortunately in my Subaru STi where I've been stopped with my foot on the

brake cards in neutral and I've been hit from behind and it's not a big deal you

know you keep your foot on the brake your kind of natural reaction in an

emergency situation like that is a tendency to break because you don't want

to move you're not trying to move

so your thought is I need to stop moving so you hit the brake when your foots

already on it you know obviously you're just going to stay stopped but anyways

the big . there with leaving it in neutral when you come to a stop light is

to prevent premature wear of this throw out bearing which is going to be

pressing up against that diaphragm spring

moving on to number three you should never use the clutch to hold yourself on

a hill and this may seem pretty obvious but plenty of people still do it where

you basically feather the throttle and the clutch pedal to get that sweet spot

where your vehicle doesn't

roll down the hill but what you're doing is you're burning up the friction

material on your clutch disc so your clutch is spinning at one speed and your

engines is the pressure plate here which sandwiches this clutch disc between the

flywheel

this is going to be rotating at another speed based on your throttle

so you're rotating this at one speed in order to bring this up to speed and in

doing so you're just gonna be wearing out this friction material because this

is rubbing up against the pressure plate and flywheel and so you're going to be

wearing out your clutch and there's just absolutely no reason to do that

so instead what you should be doing is just holding the brake when you're on

the hill that seems pretty obvious but the next question is okay well how do I

accelerate

well there's two things that you can do actually probably three things a lot of

modern cars now come with break hold and so when you're on a hill and you have

the clutch pressed in when you let your foot off the brake

they'll tend to hold you now plenty of vehicles do not for example I don't

believe this nissan 370z has it

and so in that case if it's not a big hill you know you can just kind of wait

and then get on to the throttle fairly quickly bring out your clutch a little

bit so you know you're ready to do that and have a transition you may roll a

little bit back but not much where it matters now the third scenario let's say

you're on a pretty steep hill and you don't want to roll back because there's

a car right behind you

well what you're going to do is pull the brake you've got your clutch pedal and

your foot on the brake

you can now let your foot off of the break assuming your brakes going to hold

you

and so then what you want to do you can put it in gear now you're going to start

to ease off of the clutch where it starts to bite and you'll feel this

because the car is going to start to talk a little bit and then you're going

to let off the brake and then you're off now it's a good idea to practice this on

flat ground so you get the hang of it before you're actually on a hill and you

need to actually do it for real

so you know you can just find an empty parking lot something like that pull the

ebrake start to let the clutch out

you can feel it start to grab let me break down and you accelerate you don't

roll back at all

number four

didn't apply a lot of throttle when you're not at a very high engine rpm

so for example if you're in sixth year and I'm going 40 miles per hour right

now it's not a good idea to floor it because what you're doing is you're

lugging the engine it's not a huge gearing disadvantage and you're telling

it to accelerate as hard as it can and so you're kind of conflicting there

so rather than you know flooring in 6th gear it's a much smarter idea don't be

lazy

just down shift if you need more than 50 or you know go down the second gear if

you need you can skip gear so long as you rub match i have a separate video

explaining that but it is important that you know if you need to accelerate don't

be lazy just down shift because you're going to lug the engine

if you have it in you know 60 or 40 miles per hour in the engine RPMs are

really low and you're telling it to work really hard but it's that such a huge

gearing disadvantage that it doesn't work out it can cause problems and

finally number five

one thing you don't want to do is while you're driving rest your foot let's see

here on the highway rest your foot on the clutch pedal and that also seems

pretty obvious but it's also something that some people commonly do and so

there are several reasons why don't want to do this first of all resting your

foot on that clutch pedal means your clutch may not be fully engaged in so

you can have a little bit of slip with their clutch disc

you're not putting down full power and you can be wearing out your clutch

another reason there is you can be wearing out your throw out bearing once

again because you're pressing that throw out bearing against the diaphragm spring

as i showed earlier in the video

so those are five habits that may be fairly common for some people if you

don't fully understand how manual transmission works

hopefully that cleared up the confusion and hopefully you know you can learn

from that if you are applying any of these bad driving techniques you know

from time to time i'll always find myself resting my hand on the gearshift

lever it's not the end of the world you know I'm not applying a ton of pressure

on and wearing out that fort but there are some little things like that

what you may not always be thinking about which you you know but should put

a little bit of thought into while driving a manual transmission vehicle as

you could wear it out a little bit sooner

so thank you guys for watching and if you have any questions or comments feel

free to leave those below

I guess it really need to make the noises i mean it's got a great sounding engine.