Learning to drive manual... with 460HP

Well, today's the day. You think I'm referring to the 600 mile oil change to get out of braking on the GT. I mean that's part of it, but no. Today we are doing something that's one of the most long overdue things for me to learn in my entire life. Finally I'm going to get behind the wheel of a stick shift and I'm going to get that off my bucket list so that I have the option, if I want, and it'll take more practice than just today, I'll have the option to get one of those Superformance GT40s if I decide that's what I want to go with. But I really need to learn how to drive a stick. So, headed to Galpin. Gonna drop off the GT for service. While it's in service, I'm gonna get behind the wheel of someone's personal vehicle, which makes me a little bit nervous, but being very nice and trusting, so hopefully I won't let them down. Let's head out. See, this is why I'm late, because I gotta get the b-roll shots like this one. Now playing is the Maron Music Spotify playlist, available now on your Spotify. Also on the Maron Music YouTube channel, so you should listen. Probably it's music of life. I actually, I'm just genuinely listening to it. It was on at the gym. So, shameless plug and self-promotion, because I think you'll enjoy it. Let's go. There you go. The Maron Music. Good music. There you go. Well, we did Salamander. Oh, okay. So, I get to drive manual now. Yeah. With your personal vehicle. My personal vehicle. Why does, I don't know why you trust me. It's an easy thing, man. Piece of cake. This guy's gonna get it in two minutes. Two minutes. This is a lot nicer, I feel like, than what most people learn to drive a stick in. This one is rated at 460, but it's putting about 460 to the wheel now, so it's just a couple of upgrades. Yeah, that's a more powerful than most people learn to drive a stick shift in. But you say it's like, that's the best way to do it. Power helps with this. A little bit of power and a little bit of a smooth hydraulic clutch is gonna make this process a whole lot quicker and a whole lot easier. Okay. Whatever you say. Let's do it, man. Let's go. This one, I just had two months now. He's had this two months and he's gonna let me learn manual on it. Oh my God. I feel like I'm more stressed out than you are. No, I'm not stressed at all, dude. So, this is like, trust me, once we get out there, you're gonna see. I'll teach you a few things. I would like to think that I have more high performance vehicle experience than the average person learning to drive a manual, which might help a little bit. I hope. He's like, I don't know about that. I wonder if there are any professional race car drivers out there who have just never had the opportunity to drive a manual. I wonder if that's that, or if it will only be a thing in the future. It might be a thing in the future. You'd be surprised. You wouldn't doubt it. There's a lot of guys that don't, a lot of car salesmen that don't know how to drive stick shifts. So, that one always baffles me as well. It's like, how do you sell the car? How do you move a car stick shift around the lot if you got to move it out of the way or whatever? So, that's why I tell people all the time, I have definitely taught a lot of people how to drive stick shifts. So, men, women, old, young, all religions, all creeds. You don't discriminate who you teach. Equal opportunity stick shift teacher. If someone had just their learner's permit, would you let them? Yeah. Really? I'd rather, in fact, I encourage my clients who are buying kids their cars, I encourage them to get stem stick shifts. All right, buddy, so we're gonna start down here. Oh boy, this is it. This is the long overdue, what we have been waiting for. All right, let's start with the basics. Now, number one, obviously, when you're at a stop, you want to have clutch out, engines on, gear shift lever in neutral. The second thing is a lot of people, when they're learning how to drive stick, they're told throttle, that everything comes down to the throttle, how much throttle you have. Well, I'm here to disagree, and I'm gonna show you why. Okay, so we're gonna go ahead and put in first gear. I do not have my foot on the gas pedal whatsoever. I'm just on the clutch. As I slowly let out the clutch here, lo and behold, the car is moving all on its own without me ever touching the clutch here. So, when people say, oh, you can't drive these things and, you know, traffic and this, that, and the other, the first thing that I always want all my customers to do is just get a feel for the clutch, because what you're trying to get a feel is where the clutch actually starts to engage, where it starts to grab that drive shaft, and where it starts to grab that crank, and you'll feel it. And here's the other mistake that people get. As soon as they start to feel that clutch engage, they jump off the clutch. That's when the car starts to buck and do all the rest of that stuff. But what you really want to do is just, when you start getting to that point of engagement, is kind of hold it there until the car gets, you'll hear it, the engine goes, and then it kind of goes into that idle, and now I'm off the gear. So, do that a few times. We're going to switch over, and then, then all of a sudden, you'll start to learn, okay, as I'm coming off the throttle, now as I'm doing the same exact thing, now I can feed and throttle at the same time. All right, man, now it's your turn. Come on over. All right, let's do this. All right, so again, when you're coming to a stop, you're going to do the brake and the clutch at the same time. Once you take the car out of gear, as you're slowing down, you can lift off the clutch and just use brake. Brakes are way cheaper to replace than clutches, and then that's the other thing with the stick shift, you always need to have the handbrake up if you're in a... Oh, brake in, clutch in, apparently. So, we're going to put it in first gear. Like I said, clutch is all the way in. Real slowly off the thing, and you'll start to feel the car moving forward, and when that happens, keep the pressure even. Ladies and gentlemen, Jordan has not stalled his first attempt. He's a stick. All right, now light turns green. So, go ahead, clutch all the way in. Slow out on the clutch. No gas yet. There it is. Yeah, see, you're starting to get a little feel for it, and that's why I'm telling you a Mustang helps, because that torque is enough to even ride off of idle just to kind of get you up. Are there a lot of cars that won't... A little force longer like that, you're going to feel the car kind of struggling. That's it. There you go. Let out the clutch, remember. All right, so I'm going to hit a stoplight. Don't want to do that. Wait until it turns green, all that stuff. All right, now we've got a green light again. Let's move on out. Okay, so... There we go. When you come into a position like that, so on that one, that was you were popping the clutch out too fast. When that happens, if you can save it, throw the clutch back in, and that'll always stop the stall. All right, so clutch in. Let's go ahead and start the car. Push button. Oh, it just shuts off. It just shuts off, yep. All right, so throw it in the first. Yeah. Too quick. Really? Too quick on that clutch. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Every time you're going to do that, you want to just real slowly on the way out, and that's just the way the clutches are going to be. Once you start getting the ability to feed in throttle at the same time, then you're going to be able to pop out the clutch more quickly. But for right now, we're just doing the real slow progressive thing just to do it. So slow out, slow out. There's nothing wrong with being slow. Yeah, there you go. See? There it is. And I want you to do that about 15 times in a row. You'll notice when I'm driving, the way that I hold the shifter in between gears is specific. So 1-2 is always going to be like a pistol grip. That way, I get it right into that slot. Is it just a straight front-back? Straight front-back. Yeah, from 1-2. And then when I do a 2-3, I flip my hand that way. That way, when I push, it's pushing naturally up into the third gear angle there. That's not a natural. When you're speed shifting, you'll understand. Because you're going to grab, you're going to shove, you're going to pull. What happens is a lot of guys, when you're pulling this way, your natural body wants to bring it towards you, which means that you're going to go in a second. And you do not want to do the 1-2-3-2 shift. Trust me, there's many videos on YouTube of people doing that and busting axles and the rest of that stuff. So that's why I always do it that way. Because this way, your elbow makes it go straight back here. But that's when we start doing the advanced stuff here. Advanced shifting between a few more gears. And we're going to get to heel toeing. We're going to get to double clutching and all the rest of that stuff in the advanced courses here. So come on, man. Let's see this. Clutch in. There it is. All right. God damn it. I got too confident. You did? A little bit. That's okay, man. When we round the corner, I want you to go into third. You can't accidentally hit reverse. So unless you go all the way over and you got to lift that collar, then you're in the reverse gate. But if not, this is going to be locked. So you can just, if you want to get into first, just go. That's it. Exactly. You can slam it all the way in there. Two, you can just all the way over to here. Exactly. Three is kind of just loosely go forward. Should we try a downshift? You can. Absolutely. So what we're going to do is we'll go one, two, you know, shifting the second gear, and then I'm going to have you shift back into first gear. So yeah. Yeah. I'm not supposed to do that though, right? That's not what you're going to do typically, but it's a good lesson because first gear is the toughest. So if you can master going to downshifting into first, then you can do any of the rest of them as well. Okay. Now, as we're just kind of cruising now, go ahead and put the clutch in, put it in first gear. All right now, lightly, slowly let off the clutch and you'll feel it start to grab. Now you're back in a first. I feel like I'm 16 again. It's a lot of muscle memory. That's it. That's what I'm trying to say. Once you get into the habit of it, literally you don't even think about it. Another thing, a lot of guys will do a half clutch, you know, when they're shifting gears, that's okay. That's another thing I forgot to mention. So in between gears, it's just as critical to get that clutch all the way in and all the way out. A lot of times you get these guys that will do kind of halfy or three-quarter in, and what ends up happening is I know it immediately because when I drive their cars, the clutch engagement is about that much. It's like an inch and it's way up at the top of the pedal, you know, where they're basically like that. So it actually changes where the engagement is. It does. It does. Absolutely. And a lot of those guys will snap their clutches pretty quick. Is that because it's worn the plate down so far? Right. And you're only allowing the clutch that little bit of movement. So that's why you want to get that thing all the way in, all the way out. You know, obviously when you're speed shifting the way I was there, you know, you still want to get that thing in as much as you can as well, but as quickly as you can too. So, all right, next lesson. What's that? Reverse. Oh, okay. I thought you meant out on the road. No, no, no. Everybody's shifter is a little different. Chevy likes to put the reverse on the other side, but there's a lockout on that. But either way, go ahead and lift that over to the left, all the way up. There you go. Oh, you have some of the GT40 will not have. There. Yeah, exactly. So now same thing, just progressively let out and you'll feel the car start rolling back. Okay. So anything else that you want me to do with practice before I... No, I think you've got the basics, man. You know, just the keys are like, keep, just keep mentally telling yourself, be patient with the clutch and... Don't do that. Don't do that. Exactly. Uh, I'm probably going to stumble out on the road. Well, we're, we're going to, we're going to go with some quiet ears. I'm not going to throw you out in the 405 yet. So... Yeah, I did it guys. Good stall. We're getting onto a major road here. Take your time. There it is. See? There it is, folks. At least nobody's behind us. So you, um, you would just shift it in first when the light turns green. Yeah. You know, sometimes I just kind of watch, you know, the left is just to see when it's turning yellow, that way I can kind of pre-prepare, but, uh, but yeah, pretty much like now it's going to turn green. So it's high stakes. There's someone actually behind me. I can't stall. It's all right. It's all right. It's all right. There it is. Dude behind is like, what the hell, dude? When you're in those instances, that's where, okay, now you can feed a little bit more throttle in just to get the clutch to engage type thing. Oh, so you can kind of, if it's stuttering, you can just gas it to hell? Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. That's the other part of it. If you can't clutch it in a lot of times, if you're, the car is kind of trying to figure out if you gas it and you've got a car with some power, then yeah, it's going to get up and go. That's counterintuitive. I would have figured that's exactly the opposite of what you wanted. Right, right. So I feel like the heel towing part might take another lesson. It's going to take, yeah. Yeah. That's definitely an advanced thing. I need it. Somewhat. There's still a lot more to learn, but somewhat. Dude, wasn't it easier than you thought? It really is just the actual getting moving part that is more difficult. That's it. And I didn't realize that was, so when I've, I've watched videos on YouTube of people giving the sneak instructions and they put so much emphasis on the stop and start, and I'm like, why is that such a big thing? That's all it is, man. Once you get that movement down, it's, that's all the rest of it is, because once the car's got momentum, the momentum is going to help you change gears, so. It'll be the GT driver embarrassing himself, stalling in front of everybody. Oh man, you've done great, dude. I think buying just a beater that I don't care about at all would be absolutely, absolutely required. I was looking, right, there it is. I was actually looking to see what we have. The problem that we have, man, is because we sell so few stick shift vehicles nowadays, we get so few of them turned in, you know, so. It's almost, it's difficult to find this. What'd you think, though, man? You like it? Yeah, it was fun. I appreciate you being very, very trusting. Cool, man. I hope that you're not just being nice and you're going to have to go replace the clutch after this. No, not at all, man. So, I mean, trust me, when clutches go, you smell them and there's smoke and there's nastiness and all that, but you have done the exact job. 3,200 miles. This is a new vehicle, folks. Yeah, as long as you got it, man, did you enjoy the three pedal scenario? It was very fun. All right, man. Congratulations. Thank you. All right, well, that was like, I don't know, somewhere in the realm of an hour and a half worth of GoPro footage, so I don't think you're going to have seen everything, nor would you have wanted to. But thank you very much. Appreciate your trustingness. No worries, man. No burning smells as we exited the car. The car's in one piece, the clutch is in one piece. We're good. I didn't do too much damage to her. If I want to get the GT40, I have to get. I have to get a manual. Something that I just don't care about too much that I can park out on the street. I mean, my roads will be very, very good practice. If I can drive on my roads without issue, then, well, we'll be fine. But that was it, the inaugural run. I only stalled a few times, only once on the road. Excellent student. It's a little embarrassing. It hurt my ego a bit because we definitely missed a light because of it. And there was a guy behind us and I can only imagine he didn't honk. Maybe he understood what was happening, but probably not, because why would someone be learning a manual in that car? All right. Food time. I guess the GT is not quite ready yet, so I'm going to kill some time until then. All right. We're browsing the Galpin inventory to see if there are any cheap used stick shifts. Here's the bottom of the barrel. This is asking $8,000. This is the cheapest one on the lot, right? Cheapest one on the lot. 2013 Hyundai Accent. But look at that booty. Those lines. Those are high-performance hubcaps, by the way. I've never owned a car that had hubcaps. I actually did my Volvo. My Volvo may have. I wonder why, to begin with, someone got this in a manual at all. Oh, look at that interior. I mean, hey, that thing, 2013, it might even have Bluetooth, which... It's a very big possibility. I could actually listen to my tunes in the car through the speakers. What a beauty. That is the finest plastic right there. What do you think? Is this my new car, guys? I love the transition of this to a GT40. I mean, that's pretty logical. I mean... Hey, the thing is, I bet it wouldn't actually lose much value. I put, what, like a couple thousand more miles? It's basically the same car, other than the clutch being burned out. All right, here we are. Good to go. That looks real nice. I love that. Yeah, that looks brilliant. I do kind of like, even though it's completely coincidental, how it's J-J-O, like it's my name. There you go. All right, well, that's that. Oil's changed. About to drive off. Thank you, Ladiz. Best sales guy at Galpin, Ladiz Sanchez. If you ever need a vehicle, because Galpin has a lot of different brands. This guy, he's got you. He's got you. And yeah, he's the one who sold me the GT and all that stuff. So thank you for being a brilliant instructor. And we might have another session, because I still need to heel-toe and all that. It's easy when you have a car guy that's a good student and knows what he's up to. So you may be... I try my best to respect the vehicle. I don't like to be overly eager, even though I stalled it a few times. We'll do the burnout. We'll do a double clutch. We'll do a couple of things to really get you out in there and hot shoe in it. You're going to have me doing a burnout in your car. That's a very critical thing in a stick car. Yeah, just so I can get that grip on the track. I'm going to be reaching around. Oh, where's my pedal in here now? This is weird. Sometimes when I get an automatic car, I go for the clutch pedal, and I go right to the floor because there's nothing there. So it's a very, very common thing. All right. Let me know what you think about that Hyundai accent. If I should get it or not. That's it. We're out.