I have about 20 minutes of stop-and-go traffic on my commute (10 minutes each way), and I recently learned to drive stick. I'm looking for advice on the best way to handle this for the clutch and MPG.

So far, I've just been letting the clutch out a little, give it some gas, shove the clutch back in and coast with it in. This doesn't seem very good for the clutch, though.

I try to get off the clutch when I can, but it's not often. It's usually bumper to bumper, move 20 feet max at a time.

Any advice?

 

Don't coast with the clutch in, you'll wear out your throwout bearing. Use the clutch only to change gears. Switch to neutral rather than hold the clutch in for an extended period.

Allow a little more room in front and coast in 1st gear as much as you can.

 

In stop and go traffic that's pretty much what you have to do, and there's no way around it. I live in a very congested part of San Francisco and much of my driving is like that. I have to do a lot of stop and go driving on hills, which is even harder on the clutch.

That's the advice I see on NAM, but nobody told me anything about it when I started driving manual. As a result, for over 20 years I've been in the habit of driving with the clutch in a LOT while coasting and stopped at lights. My last two cars (Honda and VW) each went over 100K miles on the original clutches and were still fine when sold. I think the stress on the clutch depends a lot more on how smoothly you shift and match revs.

 

^^Agree, depending on the traffic you really can't avoid it. As for wear, I wouldn't worry too much about it, clutches are wear items, with this kind of activity within normal operating limits. That isn't necessarily abuse.

Also if you're moving slow enough you don't even need to give gas to inch along, just release the clutch to its engagement point and creep forward.

 

+1 here. You really want to dampen the stop-and-go oscillations as much as possible, so leave plenty of room in front and don't feel like you have to catch up to the car in front of you... try to look beyond the traffic immediately ahead of you and figure out what's going on; this will help you figure out how fast you can reasonably go. Most truckers do this in heavy traffic... if you don't feel comfortable doing this on your own you can just find a semi to tail and do what he does.

If you do it right, you can manage to stay in gear with little need to disengage the clutch--and you should also be helping to reduce the traffic behind you by smoothing out the stop-and-go.

(Granted, this may not necessarily be 100% effective in all situations, but the number-one takeaway is that you shouldn't feel compelled to ride the bumper of the car in front of you, nor should you feel too defensive if one or two cars decide to take up the space you've left in front of you.)

 

I'm just starting to use a manual transmission as well and I'm taking lessons to learn how to drive with a clutch in NYC. I've been driving automatics for ~15 years. My instructor says that there is no avoiding riding the clutch when you have to drive really slow in the city ie, <10 mph. The trick is anticipating those situations where you know you are going to have to drive really slow AND THEN make a complete stop. If you know for certain that you are going to have to stop, ie, you see a red/yellow light ahead or a stop sign, then it is best to switch to neutral, let your foot off the clutch, and just use your momentum and the brakes to control your forward progress. So the decision to make in your mind is whether you are going to have make a complete stop (-> shift to neutral), or go really slow (-> ride the clutch).

I think this kind of city "stop-and-go" traffic is different than highway "stop and go" traffic. In highway "stop and go" it is literally stop, go a little, stop, go a little, etc., which does allow you to fully engage into first each time you go, but in the city, sometimes you just have to go reallllyy slow for long stretches of road at speeds that would stall in first gear.

Anyway, sorry if that was too basic. As someone who is just starting out using a manual transmission in the city, it was helpful for me to make that distinction between city and highway stop and go traffic.

 

Ditto. It makes sense that this would wear out the throwout bearing, but I've driven a number of cars well over 100K, and (knock on wood) never had a throwout bearing go out, or a clutch, for that matter.