this post was submitted on 16 May 2025
78 points (96.4% liked)

No Stupid Questions

40697 readers
1275 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here. This includes using AI responses and summaries.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Long story short: I'm (24M) American, and I'm visiting my long-distance Romanian boyfriend for the first time soon. In Romania, most cars are manual - including all the ones owned by my boyfriend's family (I'll be staying with them). I've never driven a manual before. His dad told me he can give me a quick lesson, and that I'm welcome to use their cars if I want; otherwise, I can rent an automatic. I don’t have access to any manual cars here in the U.S. to practice on, so I’m not sure what to do.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] CandleTiger@programming.dev 5 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Learning to drive a stick is really easy if you have somebody to teach you well, but waaay too many people are like, "here, keep fucking up until the car doesn't go anymore or you figure it out, whichever comes first".

Hardest part is getting the car to start moving from stopped. Changing gears once moving, you can fuck it up a bunch and nothing much happens except funny engine noises and the owner starts making constipated-looking facial expressions. But if you fuck up starting from stopped, then you lurch around a bunch, stall the engine, and don't go anywhere.

To get started from stopped, without horrible lurches or stalls, do like this FROM A FLAT PLACE -- don't try anything with hills until you can make the car go on the flat first:

  1. IMPORTANT: adjust your seat so you can easily push the clutch (left pedal) in -- all the way to the floor -- without uncomfortable stretching

  2. In your driveway when there's nobody going to honk at you, start the car, put it in neutral, and practice pushing the gas pedal just enough to hold the engine at 3000 RPM or so. Not making crazy racing noises, just a nice steady "the engine is running normal-fast-ish" and hold it that way. Practice a couple times until your foot and your ear know what it feels like

  3. Put it in gear without moving -- gas off, clutch in and put the car in first gear.

  4. Gas on, steady at 3000 RPM, slooooooowly let the clutch out until you can just barely feel the clutch is engaged. Engine revs down a little bit, car starts crawling forward. Practice that a couple times, just let the clutch out until it barely starts doing anything, then put it back in, until your foot knows what it feels like.

  5. Now do it again, engine held at steady revs, clutch out until just barely engaged, then let the clutch out just a little bit more, so the car wants to crawl, and hold the clutch there. Car starts crawling. Keep the engine steady like you've been, let the car start crawling, don't even change anything, just let the car crawl. It will slowly accelerate until you're moving at some steady 1st-gear speed. Once it's come up to (slow) speed you can let the clutch out the rest of the way.

  6. Congratulations you moved a car

[–] Successful_Try543@feddit.org 1 points 58 minutes ago (1 children)

practice pushing the gas pedal just enough to hold the engine at 3000 RPM or so. Not making crazy racing noises, just a nice steady "the engine is running normal-fast-ish"

Depending on the type of car, this might usually be somewhere between 1500 and 2000 RPM, 3000 RPM are more typical for a sports car.

[–] lime@feddit.nu 1 points 1 minute ago* (last edited 1 minute ago)

especially in a diesel even 1500 is too much.