A little late to the party here, but anyways - it really isn't that hard (I hate when people tell me that - sorry) to learn to drive stick if you know the concept. I basicly taught my self in my Z4M.
How? I found a guide on the internet (google is your friend) which explained the concept. Then I took the car out on quiet roads (in our sub) and practiced - never once did I grind gears or cook my clutch (other people have since done that for me
). The Z4M aparently has a really stupid clutch if most reviewers are to be believed, but I haven't tried anything else so can't comment on that, but I still managed just fine. Now - the part that scares me is if I had been taught on a old tranny, would I have been able to do shifts in a new more precise car? I know most people who are not used to the Z gets in it and stalls right away.
This post is getting longer than I thought it would - oh well - here are some quick tips I used to get started:
- Find the point where the clutch bites by slowly letting the clutch pedal out. The bite point is found by the RPM starting to drop, without you moving yet. If you go past the bite point you will either start rolling forward, or stall. This point is different on all cars and as such learning how to find, and keep it there, should be the first thing anyone does. At this point you can begin to apply gas and let the clutch go all the way.
- Be easy on the pedals while you are practicing. Most mistakes happen when people do things too fast, resulting in either jerky starts or lovely piles of chirping tires, followed by stalls. If you feel something going wrong stamp on the clutch to return to status quo.
- The hardest thing (was to me anyways) is to get the car going (engaging first gear) so practice that a lot and then some. It's ok to stall, but not ok to grind gears.
- For uphill starts its ok to use the brakes (either emergency or just the brake pedal) until the car wants to move. Just make sure you eventually can do it, at the very least, without using the emergency brake. The trick is to find the biting point with the brake engaged, and then set off normally, much like at a normal stop, but yet so very different
