Hey all,

Me and the wife just sot an S and I have never driven a stick before. I am learning to drive it in a kind of "trial by fire". I think I do pretty good but every once in a while i get the ol' herky-jerky thing going and the car stalls. And we are still breaking it in and tried to downshift to 3rd but hit 1st I was only going 30 at the time but I got near 5k RPM. If that happens just that one time will it be a bug problem for a car? Also how bad is it for the herky-jerky thing to happen?

Thanks to whoever responds,
Yellow

 

its not bad if it happens once in a while. They just don't want you to rev it hard. The engine needs to kind of gel together slowly. All the parts need to settle a bit. How in the world did you downshift to 1st? From 4th gear just go up, there is no pushing to the left or right. You better take it easy. If you are unsure of what gear you put it in then slowly lift your foot off the clutch and if it gives too hard push it back in again. It will take no time at all to get used to hit and soon you will be laughing thinking how you ever went from 4th to 1st. Best of Luck to you. Motor On. And welcome to MCO

 

Actually I was going from a 50 to a 30 zone so i was in 5th going 60 and lust slowed to 30 and tried to shift to 3rd. Well, I went to far and into 1st. Downshifting is quite scary still for me so I try to not use as many gears as possible. Is that bad?

And thanks for the welcome.
Yellow

 

The gearing was made to go in order, and thus doing otherwise feels unnatural and causes you to miss, as in your case. As a beginner i firmly believe in downshifting in order even if you dont let the clutch back out still do the motion of 5 to 4 to 3 and then let the clutch out. How are you ever going to master it if you shy away from it. Once you get good you can skip gears if u must. A hint is that if your in 5th or 6th and you want to downshift to 3rd or 4th just pop the stick out and it will go to the center and from there its just straight up or down. Don't try to manually pull the shifter out and to the left and up. I made this mistake when i was racing a friend. I grabbed the shifter from 6th and moved it over to go to 4th and missed and hit 2nd. Now i just pop it out of gear let it settle for a split second and then its straight down. Once you get good at it its quicker anyways

 

Yellow - I'm one up on you as I currently drive stick, but I think it will be a whole new ball game on learning with my MINI. I had no problems at the test drive, but am not sure when I should be shifting... I'm sure we'll get the hang of it and smile while doing so - that is, if we don't grind our gears in the process!!