My daugher bought a car!

[SciFiJim]

My 20 year old daughter bought a car yesterday. A 2003 Dodge Neon 5 speed. She paid cash that she has been saving. The fun part is watching her learn the art of driving with a clutch and stick shift. She has had a few lessons before in my car, but hasn't become very comfortable with it yet.

I've driven manual transmission vehicles so long that I don't remember the stress of learning. I figure I may have to replace the clutch plate in a couple of months after she gets comfortable with the process.

Like cooking for yourself, knowing how to drive something with a manual transmission should be a life skill that we should teach our children. Anyone have any tips other than practice, practice, practice that I can share with her?



The fact that she paid cash instead of financing it warms my heart (and wallet).

[MtGun44]

Make sure you make it clear that the clutch engagement process involves
a good bit of pedal travel where nothing is happening and then a very small
region where the foot needs to become very sensitive to let the clutch slip
a bit to keep from stalling the engine - followed by a whole bunch of nothing
again. Somehow, explaining this highly non-linear nature of the clutch pedal
has been sort of an "AHA!" moment for several kids I have taught.

Also - if you have a 10 speed bike around, a few minutes demonstrating
the functional difference between "lower gears" and "higher gears" may help
her to understand why this whole mystery show is even happening. Trying
to accelrate a bike in high gear and then shifting down and feeling the change
is also very educational. You can feel in your legs what the motor is feeling.

Bill

[Firebricker]

I've had a standard since I started driving but just recently got an automatic. After a couple months I still find myself throwing my left foot to the floor looking for the clutch pedal LOL. It's great that your daughter is that responsible and she'll appreciate the car that much more. FB

[SeabeeMan]

Agreed with mtgun...the concept of an "engagement range" is key.

[6bg6ga]

My 20 year old daughter bought a car yesterday. A 2003 Dodge Neon 5 speed. She paid cash that she has been saving. The fun part is watching her learn the art of driving with a clutch and stick shift. She has had a few lessons before in my car, but hasn't become very comfortable with it yet.

I've driven manual transmission vehicles so long that I don't remember the stress of learning. I figure I may have to replace the clutch plate in a couple of months after she gets comfortable with the process.

Like cooking for yourself, knowing how to drive something with a manual transmission should be a life skill that we should teach our children. Anyone have any tips other than practice, practice, practice that I can share with her?



The fact that she paid cash instead of financing it warms my heart (and wallet).

Take her to an empty parking lot and teach her how to start out slowly and smoothly and practice this a dozen or so times. Once the art of starting out on level ground has been accomplished then move to a slight grade and teach her how to start out without killing it or reving the hell out of it. I taught my wife 45 years ago and to this day she has no trouble with any stick. She has driven school bus for probably 40 years now and most of them have been stick shifts. She has no trouble getting into my supercharged Z-28 Camaro at the strip and beating somebodys hot little Mustang.

It took all of about 15 minutes for me to teach my wife years ago

[Dannix]

She paid cash that she has been saving.

Very impressive indeed. That bucks the trend for most of America.

A manual really helps getting the best out of a car like the Neon. The only con is if she ends up spending most of her time in an urban setting. (I do too much urban driving to go back to manual for my daily driver, even though I find my automatic transmission rather dumb sometimes.)

[JeffinNZ]

I miss driving a manual. That's all I had driven until a few years back. We have decided to go back to manual if we can come the time to upgrade.

[Duckiller]

#1 son bought a Nissan Xterra with a manual Transmission as his latest car. Had never driven a maanual transmission car before and a motor cycle just a little bit. I drove his car home from the dealership for him, 30 miles. Was going to park it front of our house and provide enternment for the neighborhood as he lerned to drive it. Instead he took it to his house and lerned on his own dirving side streets. My suggestion would be leave the young lady alone and let her drive at her rate. Let her know that if she needs help or suggestions you aretheir for her ,but leave her alone. She knows she will have to learn to drive it or she can't go places. She has reasons to learn fast. Neons are not my favorite car but if she doesn't ride the clutch she shouldn't wear it out.

[Matt_G]

Make sure she doesn't use the clutch pedal as a foot rest.
A lot of folks do just that and it's hard on throw out bearings.
If you are not actually using the clutch, your foot should not touch the pedal.

[bikerbeans]

SciFi,

You have done an excellent job raising your daughter. I can't think of one friend who has had a 20 year old that saved for and paid cash for a vehicle. In fact, most of my friends are still financing and paying the repairs on their kid's cars and most of their kids are in the 30s! Of course I ain't doing any better than my friends as I gave my son a car and truck and I am giving my daughter her first car as soon as she turns 16.

BB

[Wayne Smith]

I taught both boys to drive using my wife's auto transmission car. As soon as they were comfortable on the road I taught them to drive my truck, a standard. I was pleased that both chose a standard for their first car.
Start her somewhere on the level until she masters taking off in first, shifting to second, and then to third. Then teach her to downshift. Then find a hill! I drove a standard in West Virginia - nothing but red lights on hills.

[Three-Fifty-Seven]

tarts ...

[shdwlkr]

Jim
I have not driven a standard in decades after my recent wreck I found a new car with a stick in it that I could afford and now learning the clutch gas pedal thing is interesting. Sometimes I get it right sometimes I don't just more fun for me.
once I am rolling it is fine just getting that little diesel going from the stop is interesting sometimes and then again I forget I have to shift gears sometimes and it gets interesting again.

I had forgotten how much fun a stick is in the urban world but my little diesel if great if I can only remember my part in the whole process.

Make sure she understands as the clutch comes up the gas pedal needs to go down so you don't stall the engine. I am still relearning that one little fact.

My little diesel gets around 43-45 already with only a few hundred miles on the clock. Yep even in 100 plus degree weather with the air conditioner on I am getting that kind of mileage on the road in the city it is around 30 but still not bad when I look at the truck and realize it would be 14-16 in the city and around 18-20 on the road depending on if I were loaded or empty and how fast I am traveling down the road. Yep the truck is an automatic much better pulling a load.

Now if I step up to a class 6 truck it will stick shift again as that is what I learned on as kid growing up that and the tractors on the bosses place I worked on. We used trucks to haul our hay instead of tractors and wagons got more hay in each trip and we could travel faster down the road to boot.
Congrats to your daughter for getting a vehicle that will give her good mileage per gallon and great she has no payments.

[Fishman]

I tried for weeks to teach my young bride how to drive a stick to no avail. In 30 minutes my sister had her driving like a pro and she loved it. Moral of the story: have a sister that can drive a stick

Sister #2 still can't drive a stick and Sister #1 sadly isn't around any more and I really miss her.

[nvbirdman]

When my older daughter was about twelve I was going to take just her out to a dry lake bed to teach her how to work a clutch, but my ten year old wanted to go too, so I took them both.
My older daughter was just like her dad, she could not manage to let the clutch out while giving the engine a little gas. Now I know what my dad went through with me.
My ten year old daughter got behind the wheel and took off like she had been doing that for the last fifteen years.

[H.Callahan]

Make sure she doesn't use the clutch pedal as a foot rest.
A lot of folks do just that and it's hard on throw out bearings.
If you are not actually using the clutch, your foot should not touch the pedal.

+1 Way back in the day when manuals were more common, I used to be a mechanic. The clutch pedal "foot rest" was the #1 cause of clutch replacements.

[TXGunNut]

Manual trannys are a great tool to teach someone how a car works, folks who drive autos don't have to give it much thought. Shifting gears in a car is getting to be a lost art, the "standard" tranny in many new cars and trucks is an automatic with no manual tranny available.
Good that she's doing it with money she saved, a great start. I'd be proud of her too, I know folks in their 50's still getting help from mom & dad.

[khmer6]

I love my manuals but still prefer auto. The clutch in my cars with a manual transmission definitely were not for traffic. Nice of your daughter to pay cash for a car all by herself