The Lost Art of Clutch Driving
NEIRAD enilno edition
My foot was a little sore today, my left one to be exact. I had to take my mother’s car for an oil change and I kept on slamming my left foot into the firewall to no avail. There was nothing there to catch my left foot when I needed to start, back up, or accelerate. Where did the clutch pedal go?
This question has been chipping away at the minds of automotive journalists for the past five years. The fact of why my left foot is sore is truly saddening. What has happened to the joy of driving a manual transmission? The skill? The reward? It seems more so now than ever that there are increasingly less and less stick-shift cars on the road. Automatics have taken dominance in the automotive population.
Before I go into further detail (or before I go on a rant!), I should take time to explain exactly what this article is referencing. Although it pains me to think that people do not know how a manual transmission works compared to an automatic transmission, what a manual transmission is, or even what a transmission at all is, it is finally the time for light to be shed.
Take a look inside your car; the same way you were all taught in drivers ed. Observe the seat position, mirrors, and steering wheel. Start the engine. The first thing that most people do is turn the key, and most drivers ed instructors acknowledge this fact. If your car is stick shift, you cannot do that. Focus your gaze down towards your feet, the pedals to be more precise. Let’s count. Your car probably has two, a slim rectangle for the gas and a fat oval for the brake. Your car is wrong. What a ‘real’ car should actually have is three pedals: gas, brake, and the one next to the brake called the clutch. When you turn the key to start a manual car you need to hold down the clutch. Tell that to the Lewis Driving School.
So the clutch, you have heard it many times throughout this already and it is the title of the article. So what is it? No, it is not a sweet play by an awesome DHS laxer. It is the thing that engages the gears by connecting the engine flywheel to the transmission. First of all, to those who don’t know, the transmission is part of the car that holds the gears. The concept is similar to bike gears. You wouldn’t get on a bike and start in 7th gear, no; it is better to start in first gear because you can pedal with less resistance. This is because the ratio of the turn of the crank and the pedals is different than that which turns the actual wheel in the back. With a lower ratio it takes more pedal pumps to move the back wheel the same distance, which makes it easier to move forward although you may find yourself pedaling really quickly without moving very fast. High gears do the opposite; the ratios are higher so you can pedal at a lower speed with the wheel moving at a higher speed. In most cars the high gear, usually fifth or sixth is the direct gear, which means the ratio is 1:1.
However, in order to switch gears in a standard transmission car the linkage between the transmission and the crankshaft must be broken for a short period of time. When the clutch pedal is depressed a pressure plate disengages the clutch to the flywheel. To get the concept of a clutch - simply think of the word in the way anyone might use it. If you are clutching something you are grabbing it and essentially the clutch is doing the same thing to the flywheel. The clutch is engaged while driving so that it can grab onto the spinning part of the engine and connect it with the transmission, so the power can be transferred down the driveshaft (RWD) through the differential and to the wheels.
Now if you move your stare from the pedals to the center of the car you will notice a stick coming up from the floor. You may be thinking, “Ok no big deal, my car has this too,” until you realize there is no P for park, or D for drive. There is R for reverse so you can feel a little better. Typically you will see a double H pattern on the stick with numbers ranging from one through five or one through six. The reverse is the R which will be typically located on the bottom right for most American or Japanese cars (Ford, Chevy, Honda, Nissan, Toyota), or top left for most European or German cars. (BMW, Audi, Porsche, Volkswagen) This is just a stylistic difference but it is important to know exactly where all the gears are because you don’t want to put it in reverse when you think it’s in first, or reverse when you’re trying to slip it into sixth.
The tachometer
So you are now familiar with the two main components of a manual transmission car, however, this third one is probably the most crucial of the three. The tachometer. You may have noticed that a car makes noise, and consequently that noise gets louder the harder you depress the pedal. This is because the RPM’s of the engine go up. Revolutions Per Minute, or the speed of the engine increases and this can happen independent of the speed of the car because of the gearing ratio, which we previously discussed. The tachometer is an RPM gauge on your dash and it shows numbers from one to seven. Ever hear your math or science teacher tell you units are important? One to seven does not sound like a lot until you realize that the units are in thousands of RPM. If you look closely on the Tachometer you will see x 1000 showing that at one, which is typical idle speed, the engine is still turning 1000 times each and every minute. Typically when people learn this fact they tend to appreciate their car more.
The tachometer is your guide telling you when to shift gears. If you leave your car in first gear and floor the pedal the RPM’s will jump up to redline within a couple seconds. Redline is the term for the maximum RPM’s the engine will spin before overheating. All cars are electronically limited to redline to spare the engine, but it is not idiot proof. If you are blasting the radio, driving the car on the highway stuck in first gear, don’t think you won’t blow your engine. If you ever try it, which I strongly do not recommend doing, when the revs reach a certain point you will initiate the rev limiter and the engine will make an oscillating noise. This is because the car’s onboard computer or ECU is trying to intermittently cut the gas to the engine to drop the RPM’s. This is similar to the operation of ABS brakes, but that is a story for another time. The higher the revs are, the more heat will be generated in the engine and too much heat is bad. A blown engine usually happens from a break in a cylinder seal inside the engine block or a blown head gasket. The engine’s temperature will climb and the block may warp or crack and the ‘heart’ of your vehicle will be fried. Typically it is best to shift between 2500 and 3500 rpm during normal city driving, it will be most efficient, less strain on the engine, and will not anger your neighbors by driving down the street at 7000 rpm.
So if an automatic transmission does all of this complicated mess for you, why would anyone want to drive stick? You need to experience it to find out.
When you learn to drive stick - I mean really learn to drive it - after the seemingly perpetual stalling and awkward shifting, and bouncy downshifting, everything will come full circle. The driver is in complete control when he drives a manual transmission. The driver can accelerate at the precise time it wants to without any lag. Passing is quick and efficient once you downshift and rev-match. There are countless more controls that a driver can manipulate to direct the movement of a car that any other gearbox cannot match. The driver controls when he shifts gears, at any rpm, getting maximum torque and horsepower, or efficiency whenever he desires it. The driver can change the way he releases the clutch. Quickly releasing the clutch will jump the car into gear while slowly letting it out will allow the engine speed to smoothly match to the transmission speed. Downshifting is also very important; it can slow you down in a way that is more controllable by slowing the engine. Again, the way the clutch is released as well as amount of throttle action during downshifting changes the way the car responds to that shift, something that dual-clutch transmissions in new supercars cannot provide. The reward in performing a perfect heel-toe downshift is incredible, as the car will retain all power and balance throughout the turn. There are endless possibilities that come with the third pedal.
