Safely starting your car up hill – Part3 of how to drive a stick shift

Posted: Wed Jan 31, 2007 5:21 pm

There are just two methods of starting your manual car up a hill that I’m aware of. I don’t think other methods exist.

First is the easiest one, but somewhat slow and sloppy. You wait for a green light with your parking brake engaged. As soon as light turns green, you depress the clutch, shift into the first, and release the clutch to engagement start point. Then you simultaneously release parking brake, add gas, and release the clutch. It seems a bit complex on paper, but it is not. Basically you start as usual, you just add parking brake release, simultaneously with clutch engagement. It usually takes just a couple of tries to get it right, providing you already can start on a flat surface without a problem.

Second method is more complex and harder to master, but you don’t have to mess with a parking brake. You wait for a green light as usual, keeping your car from rolling back with normal brakes. When light turns green, you depress the clutch pedal, switch into the first, and start releasing clutch, while still having your right foot pressing the brake pedal. When you release the clutch until it starts engaging, you release the brake pedal and quickly move your foot to gas, and then you follow normal starting sequence.

I usually use the second method, but if I’m on a really steep hill, I go with the first one.

Driver Joined: Sep 25, 2006 Posts: 107

From my experience on this one, I'd recommend simply avoiding big hills until you get used to driving on flat roads. it was a pain in the butt to learn.. especially in the city where you KNOW some guy in a Beamer is gonna pull to a stop 6 inches behind you.

(if you see one pulling up, let off the brake and start rolling backwards at them, they'll stop!)

Posted: Wed Jan 31, 2007 5:48 pm

Yea, I definitely agree with taking it easy at first, but it's not always possible. So I think the best thing to do is to get yourself prepared Very Happy

You can practice this somewhere on a quiet street, when you don't have the pressure of a traffic on your back...

Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2008 12:24 am

Decades ago, when I learned to drive, we would lose points on the driving test if we used the hand brake to start on a hill. During the test, we had to start up a really steep hill, which we all dreaded. I guess that there was a good reason for that at the time since handbrakes were not very easy to reach and it was difficult to use the handbrake and still watch the traffic. However, the handbrake on modern cars is so convenient to use that it makes more sense to use it, at least on steep hills.

Starting on a hill without the handbrake is easier on some cars than on others. Some engines have poor low speed torque or clutches which are not easy to control, and that makes it difficult to start on a hill without using the hand brake.

It's easier on a motorcycle. The left hand controls the clutch, the right hand controls the throttle, and the right foot controls the rear brake so, with a bit of practice, starting on a hill is very easy. Unfortunately, having controls like that on a car would be impractical.

Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2008 3:41 pm

Well, automatic transmission made this task a breeze, and if transmissions are moving to the mix of auto and manual, like steptronic, this skill will eventually become obsolete...

Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2008 4:07 pm

Perhaps, but in the middle 50s, many said that within a few years, automatic transmissions would totally replace manual transmissions; it didn't happen. Perhaps it never will. On some cars, it seemed that the manual transmission was designed as poorly as possible to encourage people to get automatic transmissions. Beginning in 1955, the gearshift on Chevrolets was so horrible that anyone would be discouraged. My mother bought a 1958 Chevrolet with a manual transmission and I never got over cringing everytime I had to shift from 1st to 2nd. If you didn't move the lever just right, it would jam before you got out of 1st gear and you had to pull it back into 1st gear and start over. The shift lever rattled incessently. The ratios were good for performance (2.21 and 1.32). You could go 55 in 1st and 90 in second, but he gears whined loudly. Some Chrysler corporation cars also had horrible manual transmissions.

Another thing car manufacturers did was to provide cars with automatic transmissions for high school driver education classes so that students wouldn't learn how to shift gears. Surveys indicated that most students wanted to learn how to shift gears, but they were not provided with the opportunity.

Posted: Wed Oct 08, 2008 2:14 pm

LOL That reminds me of old Russian joke:

"I have been wearing these shoes for more than 20 years, and they were just fine. As soon as you put them on, son of the b***h, they broke!" Very Happy