i have to teach my wife how to use a manual transmition
 

do you all have any advice? i did this once before with my sister 15 years ago in my 63 bug. now the car i have as a instructional tool is my 66 912. i just don't want to be stuck and not have her be able to drive.

Best advice I can think of would be to have someone else do it.

Unless of course your wife is not defensive and argumentative like the rest of the female population.

Find another woman to teach her. Is your sister available?

see if you can find something a bit newer and easier to drive to teach her on.

take her to a secluded location (no, really this isn't leading anyplace ;) ) so she can't get flustered by other cars around.

Teach her to just start the car rolling, feel the clutch engagement. Have her get the car rolling 50, 75 or ever 100 times until she can do it easily. That's the hardest part. Once the car is rolling, the shifting is easy to do.

If you are right handed and play golf , go out and try to hit a bucket of balls left handed. Focus on how frustrating it is for you to try and do something that usually comes natural to you.
Remember that when teaching your wife.
Good luck
Steve

+1. i tried to teach my wife to cast a baitcasting rod/reel..relationship almost ended right there, right then.

The day before - outside of the car - try and explain a little bit what and why cars have gears and a clutch..

- Reference a bicycle with gears. Going up hills, going fast, carrying a load..

- Reference how a clutch "connects and disconnects" the engine from the transmission.

- Remind her a car at idle turns about 500 RPM.



I won't help a bit. But you keep the high ground when she gets defensive and yells at you!

Have some one else do it.

If you have to, click over the parts catalog and order a clutch kit from Pelican first. It will get there just in time for installation. :)

See if you can find a truck or something with a some torque, it's much easier to learn when you can just practice easing out the clutch w/o having to worry with the gas.

Seriously, Lane912... a lot of it depends on your demeanor and your wife's personality and if she has a fragile self-esteem. If you can maintain a calm, factual demeanor and she is not overly sensitive and/or in possession of a bad case of "fear of failure," you could do it.

I taught my first wife how to drive a manual. We went way outside of town on a deserted, two lane blacktop farm road and started from a dead stop about 10 times, each time slowing back to a stop until she got that part down, then did stop > takeoff > second gear > stop several times and went from there.

There was no yelling, etc. That is what makes it a major nightmare for most women.

I taught her to use the handbrake (Opel Manta) for pulling away from a stop on hills until she felt confident with trying the conventional way. She ended up preferring a manual over an auto.

If you're concerned about how it would affect you to have your 912 jumping and lurching, maybe find a newer car belonging to a friend that has an easier clutch feel for her to learn on, then move to your car.

Order your new clutch and pressure plate now.

One foot in other foot out....except for brakes, both feet in.

Good luck.

Yes sage advise !

Rent a manual and have someone else teach her.

Well i heard it was easy to learn in a porsche . a 911 atleast. because you can let the clutch out slowly without ever touching the gas and it wont conk out. Then you can work up from there.

A VW bug would be even better, and the replacement drivetrain parts are 1/10th the cost.

+1000!!!
Rent a car for $50 and save yourself from worrying about her burning up your clutch and crunching your gears.

Rent a wrangler. You sit up high and the first gear is so low that it won't stall even when you practically dump the clutch at idle. You try and teach her on a street car and she will need to rev it up too much. I don't know how the 3.7 V6 wranglers are but I am sure they are just fine. I am not sure that you can still rent a 4.0 I-6 wrangler anymore.

Sounds like a recipe for divorce. When I bought my old gf a ski lesson (I wasn't dumb enough to try to teach her myself), the instructor says he's seen numerous marriages end on the hill. :D

any 4 wheel drive with low range for that matter. Im no renter but do they even rent manuals these days?

Turn the idle speed up a little bit and make the first on a slight down hill slope. Extra nice to find an empty sloping parking lot.

Safety first. All actions are right foot brake or gas and left clutch. Always depress brake pedal AND clutch to start. On our old cars, there is no neutral safety switch.

The hardest thing to teach people is the friction zone. Too many people are raised that everything is an on/off switch like a video controller. You must FEEL the friction point or you're doomed to failure. Practice that first. Friction, pedal in, pedal out, etc. With the idle speed turned up she can feel the grab easier and will stall it less often.

It is takeoff in first and reverse that give people the most challenges. Get that ironed out smooth as can be in the parking lot. Then move on to quiet roads. Pick roads where the stop signs have the car facing nose down hill. Nose uphill is a tough one for a beginner and murder on your clutch. 2nd thru 5th will cause you less drama than start/first/reverse and they start to be fun for the driver. The key here is finding what's fun, not what is an absolute chore.

Don't aim to make her good at this. Aim to make her safe and reasonably competant. Good comes with time and practice. If you're down here in southern Oregon, I'd be glad to take her out for a lesson or practice. But be warned, I'll either take her off-roading (in my pathfinder) or to the autocross track - LOL!

angela

ok thanks for the sugestions i am going to have her read all of them when she gets home. she reads this forum from time to time.