Bigtime newbie question...
 

Say you're coming to a stoplight and you want to put the car into neutral. Do you have to put the clutch in and then shift down to neutral? Or can you just pull the shifter back into neutral without pushing the clutch in. I'll delete this as soon as I get an answer. Tried searching on google and it was just too hard to get the right info.

reason I'm asking is because for some reason I went from 1st to neutral today without pressing the clutch and nothing happened.

Shift everytime you wanna change is the easy answer.

Oh and you can force a tranny out of gear. Depending on gear loading equals to how much human force is needed to perform this.

Does anything stop you from shifting from 1st to neutral in your car?

IT can be done from any gear and you can even shift from one gear to the next without clutching. The problem is you risk doing damage each time you do it.

Yeah I just did another search and found one thread that discusses this. I also found an interesting read on how to shift without clutching at all. If you're interested its here:

http://www.se-r.net/transaxle_clutch/clutch_not_to.html

The whole article is good, but for the shifting without clutching go 3rd paragraph from the bottom.

My gears won't let me switch to neutral without pressing the clutch....

Actually it's quite possible and rather easy too to shift out of gear and into neutral. Also very minimum damage can be expected from such a shift. BUT, quite the opposite goes for shifting INTO any gear. It can be done -with some practice- but is very tough on synchros and gears....

just always press the clutch get used to it and start loving it it will make your life easier