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Step 1
The car will have three pedals. The one to the right is the gas, the middle is the brake, and the left pedal is the clutch. The shifter will usually have 5 gears. The top left gear is 1st the gear down from 1st is 2nd. The middle is 3rd and directly down is 4th gear. 5th gear is the top left corner and down from 5th is reverse.
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Step 2
Start the car by pressing the clutch down and turning the key to start.
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Step 3
Find the G spot, braking and shifting refer to video.
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Step 4
Down shifting is the only topic which the video does not go over. The act of down shifting is the same as regular shifting except you shift down into a gear instead of up. An important thing to remember when down shifting is to time it correctly, for instance if I am traveling 30mph and I down shift to 2nd gear it would raise my RPMs too high. So what I would want to do is brake till I get to the 2nd gear range, so I brake till I get to about 25 mph than shift into 2nd.
Comments
Mindee94 said
on 9/26/2009 Goodness knows this is a skill which I need to master. Thanks for the tips to get me on my way to driving a stick shift! Mindee
harvard said
on 9/12/2009 Grat article for driving a stick with a fully synchronized transmission. Before synchronization you had to "doube clutch" the thing. Those were NOT fun. But I agree, today's stick shifts are twice as much fun and more economical to run.