Whiplash78

Hi Folks-

My bundle of 8-cylinder joy should show up at the dealership tomorrow. This will be the first manual trans car I've owned in a while and while I know how to drive stick, I'm not necessarily great at it. That having been said, I'd be interested to hear any tips/tricks anyone might have for city/highway driving that will spare my clutch any undue stress. I've done my own brake jobs before as well as clutch replacements, and I would prefer doing the former over the latter any day!

TommyV

If your getting 3:73 gears, I would suggest starting off in second gear. Also, for best mileage, I try shifting around 2K.

Ltngdrvr

Highway driving should have absolutely no undue wear on the clutch.

The thing that most people have problems with on the 2011+ Mustang MT82 is how tight the shift gates are, takes a little getting used to even for someone who has been driving manual transmission vehicles for nearly 40 years...

The other thing about the 2011+ Mustang is the clutch pedal travel and take up. You will, at least until you get used to the pedal action, need to push the pedal all the way down when you shift, otherwise you may not get full disengagement of the clutch and hard shifting and clashing of the gear teeth.

It's just like any skill, practice, practice, practice...

And in a new Mustang, who minds having to practice???

db2797

Another piece of advice. Don't downshift unless you need to. When slowing down to stop, just use the brakes. Only downshift when you are slowing down and need to go to a lower gear. Replacing brakes is a lot cheaper than a clutch so you'll save some wear and tear on the clutch. I can't tell you how many people I see needlessly shifting through the gears. I just put it in neutral and use the brakes to come to a stop. It'll save gas mileage too!

PonyOx

The only time your foot should be on the clutch pedal is when you're either engaging or disengaging the clutch.

Keep your foot off of the clutch pedal otherwise.

AzPete

Use a light hand on the shifter. Let the shifter kind of float in you palm rather than gripping the **** and shifting hard. 1st and 2nd....pull the shifter towards your body....3rd and 4th are right in the center of the spring loaded unit, 5th is an easy up and away from you but 6th can be a pain because you need to actually push it towards the passenger seat more than expected....if not, you will be back in 4th. And when going into first from neutral, be sure you do not push down....some have found the pressure for reverse is pretty easy and have slipped into reverse and not 1st.

Ltngdrvr

No, no, this is just wrong. Bad practice, not good. Safety issue.

You should never coast around out of gear, if for some reason you needed to suddenly take off again to avoid a wreck or something like that and couldn't get it back into gear quickly then you'd be stuck. And if for some reason the brakes failed while coasting along out of gear you wouldn't have engine compression braking to slow you down.

Black Fire

Agreed...
I put 149K miles on my last manual trans cars clutch and I always downshifted. It takes a little practice but the sound from the exhaust is worth it.

RoushF150

+++++
You should always be in the correct gear and never coasting in neutral. More accidents can be avoided with the throttle than you think but you must be in the right gear. Being in neutral or lugging in too high a gear and you are a sitting duck with no control to make a manoeuvre. I'm with LTNGDRVR on this one.

Banjostang

Be patient and smooth while shifting until you get familiar with this transmission; especially between 2nd and 3rd gears.

Siber Express

Never coast, and actually if you are in gear the throttle is off, if you are coasting the car is idling thus using more gas.

MD1

How you know you're a bad driver?:

Not downshifting.

Saying that you don't downshift to save on the clutch is like sticking your hand out of the window to slow down your car to 'save' the brakes.

kylerohde

Yep, you don't even need to necessarily downshift coming to a stop, just leave the car in gear and don't push in the clutch until you're down to 5-10 MPH. The engine braking is helping slow the car and you're not wearing out the clutch.

OP, it's not much different than any other stick car of recent vintage. Personally, I find it easier to drive than my wife's stick Mazda3 because I like the weight of the clutch and the effort required with the shifter. Neither is too heavy but not so light you don't feel it well.

One thing you might notice is a clunking sound when you're starting from a stop and going into 2nd gear. That's the 2-piece driveshaft and not anything you're doing wrong. It's possible to shift without the clunk but pretty darn tough even after 38,000 miles of driving it for me, so don't let that worry you.

Tony Alonso

I've heard arguments for both ways of slowing down in a manual-equipped car. If one were to experience a brake failure, the emergency brake would likely play an equal, if not more significant role in slowing down the car.

Have you personally experienced this scenario?

Tony Alonso

This is definitely my practice in normal street driving.

db2797

Sorry but I disagree. Been driving a manual for 20 years now this way. I think you're more likely to have problems downshifting improperly or engine braking than coasting if you want to use safety as a reason for engine braking. Just out of curiosity how much experience do you have driving in northern climates such as on snow or ice? Tell somebody to downshift in northern weather or simply "engine braking" in the snow if they lose traction and you're going to find them in a ditch if they don't have considerable experience driving a manual. My first year driving when I was 16 years old I learned that lesson. Picking my cousin up for school I downshifted to slow down while during a wintery day and ended up losing control and going straight into a ditch. If you hyrdoplane or lose control of your car, engine braking as well could cause serious handling problems and is especially true for a newer driver. A lot of these same principals also apply to slippery wet roads. As for the freak occurrence of losing your brakes, that's exactly what your emergency brake is for.

db2797

Not true at all. If you lose traction, you WANT to be in neutral. I'm amazed at how so many experienced stick drivers in this thread don't realize this?

We're not talking about performance driving here where you want to balance the car to take a sharp turn and accelerate into the turn. We're talking about daily driving where you're coming to a stop sign or slowly going around a corner.

Gabe

I downshift all the time. I like the exhaust burble, I like being in gear, in control.

My last manual-trans veh I got over 42k out of my front brake pads and I never got brake pulsation / warped rotors, like I've gotten in all my automatic cars I've had (except my Focus, which I still drive fairly aggressively)
That same manual-trans veh still had an OK clutch when I had the engine taken out for a repair and inspected the clutch disk. I ended up replacing the disk, pressure plate and throwout bearing just for the hell of it since everything was already out and the truck had 70k on it

I have a hard time with this one ... I have 3.73's and slightly-shorter-than-stock 275/40R18 tires so the gears are now (numerically) even higher technically, and I always take off in 1st, then 2nd, 3rd, and so on ...

I've taken off in 2nd and it requires a bit more clutch slip to get going, something I don't like to do.

I've also done it the ONE time I drove the car in snow, about a half-inch of the white stuff, and it helped lessen the torque but the car was still spinning/sliding, so I decided to never drive it in the snow again

Tony Alonso

This has been my experience as well, especially when first learning to drive a rear-wheel drive car in the snow or very wet conditions. The weight shift from back-to-front, if a downshift is done abruptly, can imbalance the car.

I back off the gas slowly in such low traction situations.

dcottrell61

I totally agree with this. Weather permitting, and if I have enough room in front of me, I'll downshift.
In heavy weather, rain or snow, I'll coast and brake.