Do you mean hydraulic but not power assisted? The hydraulics have a different "gearing" (I don't know the proper word) so the force you have to apply is still reasonable. I had a Mk I Escort like that. It had drum brakes all round too. OK, but if you went through a puddle (or just drove it in heavy rain) water would get into the drums and I would have to go along with my left foot on the brake pedal to dry it out.
My husband taught himself to drive stick shift by test driving cars with manual transmissions. I'm pretty sure he'd seen someone drive stick shift, and he's a "see one, do one, teach one" kind of guy.
It's considered bad form for residents of one country to stereotype and mock residents of another country. We are all different and learn to do things differently.
But...
A work colleague was telling me of an incident that his father had witnessed when he worked for a car-rental company at an airport. A brash, over-confident American (and I'm sure that not all Americans are like this!) wanted to rent a car. My friend's dad offered him an automatic, reasoning that far fewer Americans than Europeans have ever driven a manual.
The American was confident that he could handle a manual - "how hard can it be: I'll manage". And so he was led to a manual car that was parked in a line of cars alongside the kerb.
He revved up the engine (he'd heard how easy it is to stall a manual if you haven't developed the clutch-control muscle-memory) and let the clutch in smartly. This caused him to rocket forward into the car ahead, pushing that car into the one ahead of it. Before the car-hire guy could intervene, the American had put the car into reverse and done the same thing to the cars behind, as he tried to extricate himself. Within the space of about 10 seconds he had just written-off five cars :-(
Moral: know you limitations and be cautious. It's not a sin to admit that you don't have the confidence to drive a manual car.
It's not just to be awkward that UK drivers who passed their test on an automatic car are not *allowed* to drive a manual car. I'm not sure whether an "automatic licence" acts as a provisional licence for a manual car. In other words, does it allow a driver who has never driven a manual to drive one as long as he is accompanied by a driver who holds a full licence but is not qualified to *teach* someone to drive?
What is the situation with drivers who only hold foreign driving licences when they drive a British (hire) car? Are those deemed to be full "manual" licences (ie allowed to drive manual as well as automatic)? Is it left to the driver to say "Can I have an automatic because I'm not used to driving manual?"
I'm not sure how well I'd have be able to teach myself to drive a manual car if I hadn't had a qualified teacher to give me feedback and advice, to get me past the stage of repeatedly making the same mistakes and never learning how to cure them. There is a lot to be said for driving instructors teaching learners the basics of clutch control off-road (eg in a deserted car park or something similar) so they are reasonably competent in controlling the car, changing directly from any gear to any gear without stalling or lurching forward, and recognising the signs when you need to change down *before* you stall.
I've driven a fair number of cars, manual and automatic, petrol and diesel. I hate automatics because they change gear at a time when I wouldn't: I like to be able to control the timing of gearchanges so they happen just before I start to apply power (so I accelerate all in the same gear and acceleration is proportional to throttle position all the time I'm in that gear). During acceleration, I time the gear change to a time when I come off the power briefly. I wouldn't drive an automatic out of choice, but I can do - I have to drive more gently so as not to be caught out by "uncommanded" gearchanges, especially when accelerating out of a roundabout and it's a toss-up between not enough acceleration in one gear and s*it-hot acceleration in a much lower gear; the option of "stay in this gear and let me apply slightly more power" doesn't exist.
The only car that I just could not get to grips with was a diesel VW Golf. Not sure which Mark but it had the older Pumpe Duse engine rather than the present HDi-type engine. I'm used to driving diesels, and I know that it is difficult to stall them: at worst then engine will just labour a bit and fail to accelerate. Even petrols do this, though the point at which they start to labour may be at a higher engine speed so they are a bit less forgiving.
This car was different. There was something about it (maybe some weird programming in the engine-management system) that meant that if you didn't apply quite enough power, the engine would stall completely as if the fuel had been cut off (*). No warning signs to give you chance to apply slightly more power, to dip the clutch slightly or to change down. Just a toddler's approach of throwing its toys out of the pram if you didn't get it right. Despite being used to driving diesels, I've never stalled a petrol engined car. But I repeatedly stalled that diesel VW at almost every time where I had to set off from rest. And it wasn't just that car that was badly-adjusted. I tried another one with the same engine a while later to see if it was as bad as I remembered. The sales assistant said the almost everyone stalls that engine until they get used to it. Not a very good advert for the car ;-)
I chose another car instead.
(*) A sort of "you've not applied enough power so I'm going to make damn certain that I cut the fuel off to force you to stall - then you'll get the message that you've cocked up".
I have a VW Golf MKVII and this one is diesel but with a 6 speed DSG gearbox.
The DSG box can be driven either in automatic or manual mode.
In automatic mode, it has two clutches, one for even gears and the other for odd gears, It can change gear in less than 100 mS and it will change down a gear if you put pedl to metal for overtaking.
There is a driving profile button for selecting economy mode all the eay up to Sports mode.
To put in Manual, push the gear stick to the left and it then becomes a manual paddle shift manual box.... There is no clutch pedal at all, just move the gearstick up or down and the gearbox changes gear for you.
I think you would have got on better with this hybrid gearbox....
As long as you don't over-rev the engine it's not a problem. Dump it from
5th to 4th when you're at the upper end of the rpm range in 5th and you might be picking up pieces.
The high school I went to had a driver ed course but I was too young to enroll. You had to be 16 to get a lerner's permit so my father taught me to drive. After several thousand miles on roads ranging from dirt to the Thruway the final test was a trip to the World's Fair in NYC to see how I did in big city traffic. Then he declared I was ready to take the formal test.
In a role reversal my mother taught her father to drive. She was in the back seat when he took his first test, trying a little telepathy: "release the handbrake. release the handbrake'. He didn't, stalled the engine and failed. The next time went better.
Unless you were too young during your high school years... On ther plus side I didn't have to watch the gory movie that was part of the course.
My wife taught herself to drive a stick one evening when I wasn't up to the task. She never got out of second but that was good enough at the time. More formal lessons were given when I was sober.
Bikes tend to be a DIY learning experience since nobody is fool enough to ride pillion behind a learner. The people with poor throttle and clutch control tend to drop out early.
When I was selling one bike my boss expressed interest. When he found out it wasn't an automatic he lost interest. I breathed a sigh of relief. He's a good boss and I'd rather he live to a ripe old age.
Just a fancy version of my car. I can shift into the lower gears. On long grades where the car hunts between 3rd and 4th I often kick it down to
3rd. It's still an automatic.
On the farm, we used to eat snow. In town, it can taste like chemicals.
Pretty much what it’s programmed to do I believe. Something to do with protecting the dual mass flywheel from excessive vibration at low revs. More rev than throttle position dependant I believe.
Probably good reasoning behind it but it takes a little getting used to at first.
Tim
In 2021 (around Valentine's day) we had too much snow.
I remember a $79 fillup. That was in about 2007, when prices were at their highest.
When we split my wife took the 100LS and I took the Lincoln. She eventually traded it for a Rabbit and got a pittance for the Audi. The Rabbit, which I believe was what the Golf was called in the US at the time, was a much better car. Germans learn fast.
The Audi had a quirk. Every 15,000 miles of so it would fail to start. Replace the plug wires and you were good for another 15,000. I carried a spare set. There wasn't any roughness or anything prior to the failure. I believe the rudimentary computer sensed something slightly out of range and decided it was time to go on strike.
"Going by Consumer Reports frequency-of-repair charts, those early Audis were not reliable. The April, 1978 issue has charts for 1972-'77 cars. The Audi 100LS has a "much worse than average" figure for 1972-1976 and an average rating for
1977.Problem areas were engine mechanical, engine cooling, exhaust system, fuel system, ignition system, automatic transmission, air conditioning, brakes and electrical system."
No, I meant drum brakes operated by rods:
The highest I've seen here was £1.60 a litre. That was in the covid bullshit era.
That's why grown-ups should not be posting through google groups. It's useful to find some old thread or old post that isn't in your computer, but if you want to post, you should act like an adult, get a news reader (some are free), subscribe to a news service (some are free) and reply to every group to which the post one is replying to was sent.
We've had Usenet for more than 30 years, and if people can't learn how to use it properly in 30 years, they should either just stop, or ask for help.
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