I’m about to swap out our old car for a slightly less old car, and the newer one is a 5-speed manual transmission. Driving manual doesn’t bother me, but my manual driving was also done long ago in a flat state – Florida. Hills are a bit new to me, and I’d like some advice.
How do you drive stick around Brattleboro? I assume there are some hills to simply avoid altogther (Union Hill up, I’m lookin’ at you…), but how do you handle hills up and down? Are people downshifting, or just riding their brakes down High Street? What’s a good strategy when stopped on a hill going up? And what’s 5th gear for?
Any and all advice is appreciated.
How to Drive a Stick Shift: Dealing with Hills
How to Drive a Stick Shift: Dealing with Hills
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWh5BW-XwtM
How to Drive a Stick Shift
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Btj-ost5Sg
Local info
Thanks for general info…
I’m after real life, local intelligence and suggestions specifically about Brattleboro terrain, though.
Practice when there's no traffic!
Go out at low-traffic hours and practice getting a feel for the car on quiet back roads. Especially getting the timing right on finessing the clutch/brake/gas on making hill stops. Much easier to learn when you don’t have a car behind you to roll back into! With repetition, you’ll start to do it smoothly without even thinking about it.
I know many people who do go up Union Hill, but personally, I never, ever even want to try going up Union Hill in my manual car!
Downhill, sometimes I downshift and sometimes I brake, kind of depends on the circumstances. Another thing you just get a feel for after a while.
Bridge Street
Waiting in traffic at a red light going up Bridge Street into Malfunction Junction is my least favorite, with cars bumper to bumper and no room for error. I usually end up with the clutch and gas both simultaneously about half-engaged, hovering in place, because it’s easier than trying to brake and re-accelerate.
Find a good spot to practice,
Find a good spot to practice, and then practice, practice, practice!
Take a drive over to Wilmington and practice in the Haystack parking lots, unless someone has a suggestion for a closer spot with lots of room and no traffic. A quiet road is good, but blind corners and folks not expecting you there aren’t a good combination. A parking lot is really the way to go.
There’s a little bit of a grade in the Hannaford lot, and the South end is pretty open. Might be a good closer place to start.
On a gentle grade, see if you can get going in 1st without using the gas at all. That will give you a sense of using the clutch smoothly. As you need to get going faster, or as the hill gets steeper, you’ll need to add a more aggressive touch on the gas, but knowing you can do it with NO gas is a good start.
Does your new/old car have a tachometer? Some folks like to know the actual RPM, some folks find it more confusing. The higher the RPM, the more power you have, the lower the RPM, the less gas you are burning. 5th gear is for highway cruising at 65 MPH, so that you will use less gas. You may not be able to pass on a hill in 5th at 65, and you may need to shift down to 4th to get more RPM, burn more gas, and have more power to pass, then go back to 5th after the hill.
If you stayed in 5th all the time, your engine would be running at very low RPMs most of the time and not running cleanly. Different drivers have different preferences of where their sweet spot is in terms of RPMs, and different folks have different opinions about how that affects your engine in the long term, that’s why Car Talk is still on the air. generally, staying in the middle is good.
Automatic transmissions don’t typically use the engine for braking when driving downhill. It is an option that you can use when driving a manual, but you don’t need to. You may extend the life of your brakes by doing it, but if you burn out your clutch doing it, that’s not a good trade off. Brake pads are cheaper than clutches and transmissions.
I use downshifting to check my speed on RT 9 between Brattleboro and Bennington on the steep hills. Unless I want to stay in 3rd down those steep hills, (instead of 4th) I usually need quite a bit of braking too. 3rd would keep me around 50 mph without a lot of braking. 4th is a good trade off of going fast enough so the folks behind me aren’t tailgating, and I’m not smelling my brake pads burning. 5th would be all braking. Don’t get in the habit of coasting in nuetral. You want to be able to respond to surprises like wildlife, other vehicles, etc.
Driving down Union Hill I stay in 2nd. Driving up Union Hill is fine once you are confident in your ability to do it. It’s all about practice. The more confident you are doing it, the easier it is, so you need to practice until you are confident.
If you have a good working hand brake that will hold the car in place, you can incorporate that in when you are worried, but if you practice, you won’t need it. You may find it reassuring (but also may find it more confusing) to engage the hand brake when stopped at the light on Main heading North between Flat and Elliot, or exiting Hannafords at the light and turng left when everyone is squeezing in waiting for the green light, or the nightmare scenario of getting to the top of Union Hill and finding 8 cars in line on the hill. (Good time to just set the hand brake and wait until it is down to one or two before proceeding.)
Keep practicing and soon you will find you can head up Union Hill confident that no matter what you find at the top, you can handle it!
Anyone have any suggestions for a nice hilly place to practice, ideally an empty parking lot?
Stick Shift
Years ago my daughter needed a vehicle to drive from her college to various student teaching assignments. I found the “right” car, a Subaru Justy. The only problem was that it had a standard transmission. “No Problem,” sez I. “We will just practice until you can drive the car:”. So we practiced on the Sunny Acres hill and the little hill leading up to BAMS. Night after night, squealing tires and stalling motor until one evening it all clicked. She stopped, gave it a little gas, let out the clutch and she was up the hill smoothly. Then followed several more successful attempts in succession. Some workmen on ladders who had observed the several days of practice took time out to give her a solid round of applause and a loud cheer. She drove that little car for 4 years before bequeathing it to her brother who drove it for another 4 years.
Time to practice
Thanks everyone… very helpful.
So I put in in R to go Really fast? (Just kidding…)
The first car I drove stick was an old Datsun that, if it rained, required the driver to continually restart the car while driving to keep it going. It was the car I learned stick, actually, and I still recall that first time out. It took many tries to get into first, but then we were going…. but hadn’t really considered how to stop. My sisters and I were making really quick decisions about routes that had no stop signs or lights (Quick, turn here!) We made it around a few blocks, got in position to get home, drove slowly onto our front lawn and sort of turned it all off with a bug thud/screech, digging nice big ruts into the lawn.
It got better after that…. : )
Hands on
I see what you mean by seeking hands on local experience.
PRNDL
There’s a classic episode of Green Acres in which Eva Gabor’s character takes driving lessons and basically drives the instructor crazy. She referred to the column-mounted automatic shifter as the “pernerndil.”
Manual in the mountains
I learned to drive in southern Vermont in a car with a manual transmission. With only a little practice you’ll soon master the art of starting from a dead stop on a steep hill using your handbrake or emergency brake, and using your clutch to hold your position on a hill.
Rowing your own gears makes driving much more satisfying!
Updates
I thought you might like an update.
I took the train to DC, visited my sister, did the paperwork, and on Tuesday I woke up and re=learned to drive stick starting on the Beltway, then 95 north to the New Jersey Turnpike, then up and over the Tappan Zee, through Connecticut, and up 91 to home.
Only ground the gears once, downshifting incorrectly. The rest went smooth, and I now understand 5th gear.
Back home, I only got a bit of driving around town in before parking it and waiting for registration. The one thing I noticed was that the hills were no problem… where I need practice is puttering along in stop and start driving. After going on highways for so long, I need to remember that the car also works in 1st and 2nd. : )
New plate stickers should be here soon, then I can put the old Honda 98 Civic up for sale (low mileage!).