Stickshifts

I'm amazed at my inability to find what I consider to be simple things on Google. /rant

I can't drive a stickshift because of my disability, but Vincent can...barely. Unfortunately neither of us knows how a 1968 Chevy Nova SS would stall while turning from a flat, snowy, and icy road into a flat, snowy, and icy parking lot. The car has to slide to the curb of a bus depot at a low rate of speed without incurring any damage, or Padre will be forced to kill Vincent for damaging the car and I won't have a main character anymore.

Also, once the car has stalled, how do you get it started again? Do you have to wait any length of time to restart the car? Is it just as simple as restarting the car?

 

Not sure about a '68 Nova, but I used to drive a Sprint and it was beast to keep from stalling. You're most likely to stall when starting off or slowing to a stop. When you start off, if you don't give it enough gas while letting off of the clutch, then she'll stall on you. If you forget to put it back into first and try pulling out, she'll probably stall on you, too. If you're slowing down and forget to gear down as you slow, you can stall her that way, or if you forget to hit the clutch while stopping, you can stall it like that, too. If you do stall it, though, you don't have to wait to start it up again. Just hit the clutch and turn the key and you should be good. Alternatively, if you've still got some momentum, just drop it into the proper gear and pop the clutch. It'll jerk you around a bit, but that's how a push start works. You probably wouldn't want to push start it in the snow, though. It could start you skidding and that probably isn't very safe.

 

Thank you. As it happens, the Nova more or less gets to the curb where Vincent was intending to go, so he takes a minute to trip around on the ice for the shits and giggles, and picks up his passenger. It seems it's safe for him to remove the keys, give them to his passenger, and she can drive them away just like starting the car normally. Is that right?

 

Yeah, while stalling isn't inherently good for a car, it isn't overtly bad either. She should be able hop in, start it and take off as if it had never happened.

 

Stalling wears on the gears but it takes a lot of wear over a long time to cause transmission damage.

It would stall if you aren't giving the car a minimum amount of gas.

In an automatic you can come to a stop and the engine continues to run, you need not put it in neutral.

With a manual transmission you can coast almost to a stop, but get too close and the car stalls unless it is in neutral or unless you engage the clutch which does the same thing, take the car out of gear.

Best to write whatever maneuver you want and at the last minute, forgetting to put in the clutch as one stops, the car would stall.

It's not like flooding a carburetor or anything like that where one sometimes has to wait until the excess gas evaporates. Essentially the car stalls, and can be restarted right away.

The real pain with manual transmissions is when one has to stop and then go again on a hill. Stall the car on the hill, now you have to use the emergency brake because one has to put the clutch in to start the car and with only 2 feet, that means one for the gas, one for the clutch and none for the brake. Then you have to slip the clutch (let it out as you give the car gas) and release the hand brake at the same time, all the while hoping you don't roll backwards into the asshole who stopped too close behind you in their blissful ignorance of manual transmissions.

Or, if you give the car lots of gas before releasing the clutch, you smell your clutch burning. Do that enough times and you'll burn out the clutch. And if you do a real hummer of a job on that clutch you can end up like I did coming back from the eclipse getting stuck in stop and go traffic on a hill.

Not only did I burn up the clutch, the car froze, it would not roll, not forward, not backward, not with the gear in neutral or the clutch in, nada. Think people get pissed off when you stall your car, imagine how they react when they don't understand why you can't push your car off the road.

On the bright side, the cops make sure you have the highest priority for the very busy tow-truck company.


Now my son who had to retrieve my car once and didn't know how to drive with a clutch didn't know you had to put the clutch in to start the car. He came back and said the car wouldn't start. I knew right away why, I forgot to tell him about putting the clutch in. This is true even if the car is in neutral gear.

 

Use the left foot for the clutch, the heel/arc of the right foot on the brake and toes/ball of the right foot on the gas. It takes a bit of romancing and gets harder to do if you're wearing a stiff boot or a tall heel, but it lets you drive those cars that have a funky little e-brake pedal by the door (which I think the Nova has) instead of the handle in the center.

 

The driver’s foot slipping off the clutch before accelerating would seem the easies solution. It would stall any manual car immediately (as long as it was in gear) and doesn’t rely on any quirks of a particular make or model. It would also allow the car to be restarted immediately.

Edit - also, if it’s icy (which I think you said it is) then that would explain why his foot slipped - ice or snow on the bottom of his shoe.

 

It is icy, and Vincent has trouble because of his disability. Thanks for your reply. It's not so important how it stalls, but I wanted to make sure it was possible given the conditions, and the car wouldn't be any worse for it.

I assume the brakes would still work on a stalled manual car.

 

Yup, but because power brakes are powered by the vacuum an engine creates, when the engine isn't running you'll only get one or two pumps of the pedal where they'll work line normal. After that they work like manual, unpowered brakes and you pretty much have to stand on the pedal to stop anything larger than a Gremlin.

 

This. God yes, this. This brought back bad flashbacks of my sister's first car and hills in San Diego. That car hated hills past a certain grade, and I remember my having to yell out the passenger window, "Back up or we're going to roll into you!"

Didn't matter who was driving it, or how good they were with a manual transmission in any other circumstance, that car just despised steep hills.

 

I like doing hill starts with the handbrake. I could never drive an automatic. It wouldn’t feel like I was really driving if I didn’t have to change gear.

 

Easiest way to explain a stall is a shift into the wrong gear. First and third are usually right next to each other, and third doesn't have the authority to lug things around. Just have him not pull the lever over far enough and he's boned.

...Additionally, since third is a relatively tall gear, at low speeds, it tends to shut things down pretty gently--that is, the engine doesn't have enough torque to make things lurch a lot when in third.

I wouldn't try to relate this to snow. In first gear, my car can sit and spin in snow and I don't need to use the clutch at all when I stop. Not that it will go again after that.

 

...Didn't see the question about restarting the car. You push in the clutch and turn the key. That's it. Although you'll want to switch to a different gear--and straighten out the front wheels--before you try going again, otherwise you're liable to have a repeat performance.

 

No thank you. I do not enjoy temperamental trannys that are easily
stalled, or with which you grind the gears. I stick to my auto magic.
I cereal you need like 3 feet, and the right touch considering not all
standards are the same.

 

I had an old Volkswagen Diesel and that stupid little thing had so much torque you had to actually try to stall it if you were in either first or reverse. You could even take off in second without any gas as long as you weren't worried about burning the clutch.