I tried teaching two different girls many years ago. The hardest part is keeping your cool... lol. They didn't understand they had to push in the clutch when they wanted to stop... one almost drove us into a ditch... keep your hand on the e-brake... You'll need a drink afterwards as well. Have fun.

 

^^valid point, I always remind them hey you still have to steer. Tend to get focused on the gas clutch shift thing that they forget they are still driving

 

It will be hard at first, just be patient.

 

I tried this with my daughter, I then passed it over to my wife. Apparently I made my daughter too nervous while driving a manual. I completed the automatic trans portion of learning to drive in my old 2007 Focus SES so she had the basic skills but wanted to make sure she could drive a clutch. My wife endured the 5M and 6M transition like a champ. Unfortunately my ST had to go in for a re-tightening of the RMM with all of the attempts of her learning to drive. My bullet proof LX 5.0 and my wife's MCA Mustang did the trick and my daughter is now a confident manual trans driver now with her unrestricted license.

 

Made her nervous huh? Sounds familiar. I tried teaching my wife but I just let her go for a few laps in the ST. Now she has an STI to beat up on.

 

Rent a car.

 

Rent a car with a manual transmission... in America? That's the funniest thing I've read all day

 

Yah, after a brief period of nervousness on my part, I realized that I needed to stay cool and calm and just talk her through each step. This is easy in a parking lot, but getting on the highway is another step all together. Today's lesson went well in my opinion. We might even try again later since the weather is nice.

 

Get a good grip on the Oh, crap handle and hold on! She'll get the hang of it and make you proud.

 

^ that's how my dad taught me. He didn't rent a car. It was a Penske box truck with a manual. But same thing haha


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My girlfriend stalled my ST so many times... All I can say is be patient, and find a big open safe place to experiment.

 

I'm about to face this situation with my kids. I plan to start with the car off and run through starts and stop situations watching how they react to using the clutch and shifting. Once they can show they can remember to use the clutch correctly we can start the car and get used to making it move smoothly. After that we will move to shifting through a few gears. Parallel parking is a whole different battle!

 

I feel your pain. I just taught my 16yo daughter how to drive on my Saabaru WRX with a very, very tired clutch. Not easy, even for someone who drives stick already. I found that she learned faster when she was allowed to choose her route and speed. The first week we never made it out of first gear. GAAH! Back roads with no traffic will be your friends. If you turned off hill assist you might want to enable it. Make sure you always have a free hand to grab the wheel when she's trying to coordinate shifting. We almost ended up in a ditch one morning, I dumped my coffee to save the car.
You are such a cool dad to let DD learn on your ST! It's all muscle memory so learning how to release the clutch smoothly will take time, unfortunately. Give her a week or two.

 

When I teach people I take them to a steady hill. They'll start shifting into 1st downhill and when they get more proficient they can start going uphill.

butchered by autocorrecr

 

Teaching my son was not that bad, he has had various dirtbikes since he was 5 so he understood how the whole clutch thing worked.
I remember when he was 10 I let him drive my S2000 because I was about to sell it and I thought why not.
I sat him on some pillows and he did really well.
His first(and current) car we got him a manual, just like he requested.
The only thing with him was he would look at the shifter when he changed gears, but I quickly got him over that.
The really scary thing was yesterday I let him ride my R6 sportbike for the first time. He still needs to do MSF.

 

Get a spare clutch

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I have 8 kids and I've taught them all. Over the years I developed a system that seems to work for all.

Go to a deserted, large, flat parking lot. Explain how clutch works with gears and make them get the car moving using just the clutch (no gas pedal) until they can do it every time. Then you start working them through the gears and explain the engine rev'ing sounds and what they mean. Once they've got that, then you work on down shifting to the correct gear for turns or when you need to accelerate. When they seem to be pretty good at everything, I take them to the stop sign on the uphill road for their final exam.

 

Teaching somebody how to get the car moving with just the clutch and no gas is a good idea, it would have probably helped me out a lot when I was learning. I will probably end up teaching my fiancee and her sisters (on my brother's Fiesta) and I will definitely do this. I basically taught myself when I was in autotech classes in high school, told the teacher I knew how to drive stick when I had never done it before and learned by trial and error moving cars in and out of the garage haha.

 

I taught my gf how to drive my old manual focus and she got really bad anxiety about it because of how anal I am about my cars. She freaked out when she killed it a few times... But she got over it and got better because I was patient. Then she got pretty good and could drive around without much problem. But now that I got the ST she is afraid to drive it because it's new... Lol I guess that's a good thing in disguise

 

I have had some success by telling the learning driver to put the tach at 1500, then let out the clutch and simultaneously give it gas to keep the revs at 1500 until the car is going.

And repeat. And repeat. And repeat.

Have fun!

Dave

 

This is why I don't buy used cars LOL.

 

Even with such treatment, the first clutch on my Viggen lasted 168,000 miles.

 

I was taking some guys from work to lunch the first day I had it. They were amazed how sensitive the clutch was. My exact words were 'this would be the absolute worst car to teach someone how to drive with.' And I'm standing by that, lol

I've taught about 20 people to drive stick, starting with my sister and her friends, and there was only one that didn't get it and I gave up on. My strategy is to teach them about the clutch engagement point. I start out in the driver seat and show them how to get to the engagement point and how to get going from there. I also stall the car by letting the clutch out too far (because you know it's going to happen) to show them they don't have to be nervous about destroying anything. I don't know how the ST is, but my old Civic just dies and you wouldn't know it if the cluster didn't like up like Christmas. I find that really puts people at ease, and most got it with only a few stalls. Hope that helps...

 

Two things, OP:

First, I lived in the Quad Cities for 20 years, Illinois side. Nice to see someone else from the area.

Second, if I were going to teach someone to drive a stick, I would buy the most beat-up pos / cheap manual vehicle i could find and let them drive it until they killed the car or learned.

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I'll agree that the ST is not really a great car to teach on. Super light pedal. I learned on my 92 Ranger and then moved up to a 2000 Focus ZX3. Both had a slightly heavier clutch than the ST.

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The last 5 kids I taught on the srt-4. The triplets had to deal with the six puck ACT clutch...

 

Sort of funny for me... I don't recall ever learning to drive a stick. My first car, 66 stang 3 speed, just jumped in and drove it to my test. Probably a few years of dirt bikes helped a lot.

I got my wife driving stick on the ST. Easiest car in the world. During teaching her I, we, discovered that the ST doesn't even need gas from a dead stop even on a hill (w/o hill start on). You just let the clutch out normally and the computer modulates the gas as necessary! Goes along with creeping along in 1st gear it won't stall. Doesn't get any easier that that! Dump the clutch and of course it will stall.

 

I started out on dirt bikes when I was 6, plus my Dad got me this Kawasaki kx80 2-stroke bike that could really haul ass, a lot more ass than a 6yr old should be hauling. But the engagement point on that clutch was very fine, almost finicky so being smooth with release was important. I then got 2 driving lessons in a manual Toyota Yaris, went out and bought myself a 2007 V6 mustang with a 5 speed. I smoked the clutch on the first steep hill I had to stop on getting home but did fine with regular shifting while moving. I was so pissed I had done it that the next day I went down my road to a dead end road that is about a 45degree incline the whole way up, planted myself halfway up the hill and said I will not roll down past this point. And after a few tries and major patience I could hold that car on any hill without even needing to touch the brake.
I plan on teaching my gf but maybe not so extreme an definitely not on my ST yet lol

 

The ST is not the easiest car to learn. A standard SE focus is way easier for learning.