this post was submitted on 21 May 2024
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Driving stick, still haven't figured it out and now that I lost sensation in my feet, seems like I'll never get it.
I understand how it's supposed to work, I just can't do it without stalling.
Learning to work the clutch and feel the friction zone is a more difficult skill than some want to admit.
Learning to drive a motorcycle was a bit overwhelming, I remember my instructor talking about applying the brakes with right hand and foot while disengaging the clutch with the left hand and downshifting with the left foot… and thinking “how the hell is anyone supposed to keep track of all that!”
I do miss my stick shift though, it was more fun to drive even if less practical.
Oh right… It’s a good thing I already knew how to drive stick before taking up motorcycling.
This might sound dumb, but I'm doing this with Euro Truck Simulator. I've got the wheel/pedals/shifter, but I can't for the life of me get it to not stall out, especially when pulling heavy loads from a standstill.
I've seen pedals that have haptic feedback for feeling the clutch engage, and I'm honestly considering saving up for it, cause I'm obviously missing something here.
I doubt it will really compare to an actual truck. When you're driving one, the pedal is the easy part. The truck has so much torque it is harder to stall, unless you're loaded heavy and on a hill. The tricky part is getting your shift windows without synchromesh.
I remember when I was learning, it was a bit challenging to hit my shift windows at first, and remember what split I was in when I was on the road. Back then I had a little xB and a FJ40. Both of those were manual. When I got back into one of them, it felt insane that anyone could screw up in one of them.
I had already learned front end loaders, skid loaders, and a skid steer, and was working on a certification for case controls on an excavator, so the coordination complexity of hands and feet were no big deal.
The clutch is all about feeling the difference between the spring pressure and the friction.
Anyways, at least for me it can help to think in perspective like this; about other areas where the same basic skill applies with perhaps even more complexity. Like after a few days on an excavator you stop thinking about the individual controls and start thinking about the bucket like your hand and the boom like your arm and the pivot like your waist. The brain, or at least mine, abstracts away the motions like an extension of your body. It is such a strong connection and the hydraulic feedback is so direct, that you can "feel" with the bucket without actually seeing into the trench. Like if you hit a rock, a root, or even conduit in the ground, you can feel it in the controls like it is a part of you.
I think this here is what gets me. With the cheap sim pedals, you can't feel anything, and have to go entirely by visuals, like watching the tachometer for a sudden spike. By the time you can react, you're already stalled half the time. I totally agree you need that visceral feedback from the machine to really use it with any degree of finesse.
I've driven a fair bit of heavy machinery in my time, and never had an issue working the clutch, but those simulators are a different beast altogether - at least at my price point. Maybe one day I'll be able to afford some realism, haha.
Too much clutch, not enough revs.
I had a lot of trouble learning on my brother's Kia. When I got my own MT car, it was so much easier, mainly because the clutch on the Kia was extremely heavy. See if you can adjust the clutch pedal spring to make pushing the clutch pedal easier.
The key for me was being told: it’s okay to ride (to hold) the clutch a little before/during/after you’re switching gears.