As I have already posted in some other threads I am new to driving stick...

When I am starting on a small to medium incline I like to keep my foot on the break while I bring out the clutch close to the "sticky point". This point seems really far back on the RX-8 clutch and if I don't do this I tend to roll back quite a bit before I get going.

My question is:

Am I hurting my clutch/trasnmission by keeping my foot on the break for the intial part of my clutch release or is it ok?

How do others do it (not including emergency brake way)?

Thanks in advance.

J

 

For me, it's all in the timing, IIRC, I start to release the clutch as I go for the gas, by the time the clutch is out, the accelerator's got the revs up to a point that keeps the car rolling back. The trick is to let the clutch start to grab without letting it out too quickly... or as you know, you stall.

Practice I guess... and I'm going to need a lot of it, what with driving automatic for the last 5 years, now with a standard... damn hills, they should be banned.

 

I hate hills myself. I just release the clutch to the point where the car holds on a hill (or right before stalling) and then go from there. My friend calls it the "sweet spot". I know this is not the proper way to drive but I find it better than to use the handbrake method.

The one thing I like is Subaru's feature called Hill Holder. It does exactly what it says. You can let your foot off the brake all together and focus only on clutch and gas.

 

You can use heel-n-toe. Thats what my friend told me to do, but I just let the clutch out slowly where the steering wheel starts to shake and I give it some gas and no rolling back.

Al

 

Here's a little hint. When you're on a hill and you see someone pulling up behind you, let the brake out and roll back just a little bit, but not too much, just enough to let them know you have a manual transmission. They will almost always stop in time to give you plenty of room to work with. Nothing worse than someone right on your bumper.

 

If you're new to manuals and are unsure of hill starts.. why not use the hand brake to stop yourself from rolling back.
ie. pull the hand brake up whilst you're at the lights on a hill. when it's time to go, just take off as you would normally do on a flat, but slowly let the hand brake down as you get the rpms up.

hope that makes sense..