Howdy,

I have some experience with the conversion. Recently I took a business trip to Gaum where the rental car agency had only a manual transmission Nissan Sentra. So I took it. Here's my experience:

You need about a week of driving around to get the clutch/shift/throttle action down.

You should always remember to take your time, especially at stop lights. Don't feel rushed, you will only stall the engine or squeak the tires that way.

If the engine stalls, always remember to press the clutch, put it in 1st, and restart the car. Don't panic or rush.

Shifting the car comes pretty quick. The trickiest part is mastering situations where the car is pointing uphill and you have to take off from a dead stop. The hotel where I stayed (Mariott Tuman Bay) has a sidewalk in front of it and an exit ramp. You have to stop at the sidewalk and then ease it onto the street. Very tricky for an auto person.

Remember if you stop, you need to have both the clutch and brake depressed. You need to get out of the brake and then out of the clutch. You should require little or no accelerator to get the car moving.

Parking is real different than an auto. Easing it into a tight parking spo2t requires feathering the clutch. Much harder than an auto. Remember when parking or going slow: depress the clutch until it slips. Want more power, let off the clutch a little. Engine sounds like it will stall, give it a little more gas and leave the clutch where it is. You don't need to use the accelerator to get into a parking spot (unlike an auto).

When you come to a stop, always leave enough room in front of you to feather into the clutch and always check behind you to make sure th2at you have room to slide backwards. People get waaayyyy too close so be careful.

No distractions: Drive around for a while without the radio, etc... When you start, you will have to make consious efforts to actuate the clutch. Also, you really can't just slam on the brakes, you must push the clutch. If you are distracted, you forget this and stall the engine.

The FIRST TIME you drive the manual car, put it in neutral, start the car, depress the clutch all the way, put it in first and ease it out SLOWLY until the engine bogs. Either the car moves or the engine stalls. If it stalls, you know that you need some accelerator to get it going. Try it again this time with just a TOUCH of accelerator. Too much and you squeal the tires.

Don't worry about stalling the engine. It's probably better than too many revs. I suspect that even experienced manual drivers have to "feel out" the clutch and engine before they can just hop in and drive an unfamiliar car.

As a 99% auto driver myself, I did find out that auto's aren't really as bad and manual's aren't really as good as I've been led to believe. The Nissan had NO clutch feel whatsoever so I couldn't find the release point easily. Nor was the shifting very positive: very rubbery and hard to tell if it went into gear or not. Plus, the Nissan engine has NO torque and a really light flywheel. It stalls easily, but also revs to easily which leads to too aggressive of a start. And Guam is ALL stoplight to stoplight driving, so I had to learn fast.

The only other manual vehicle I've driven is an old 3-on-the-tree Ford F150. So I don't have a large frame of reference.

That being said, my next daily driver will be a manual.

Sholin

__________________
What else, '73 MB 280 SEL (Lt Blue)
Daily driver: '84 190D 2.2 5 spd.