Ask Lemmy

Try not to cruise in neutral. Better to be in gear whenever possible to reduce brake wear/make it easier to brake and ensure you have power to the wheels when you need it (e.g. an emergency situation).

Also, as fun as popping the clutch is, it’ll eventually kill your car.

Some advanced stuff since everybody else probably already covered the beginner stuff:

When you get the hang of driving stick, which you will pretty quickly, you can try matching revs on downshifts to smooth things out and then you can try heel toe with matching revs.

When you get really good you can shift gears without engaging the clutch just by rev matching, but don’t try that til wayyyy later. Can mess up the gears.

You can use the emergency brake to keep from rolling back if your car doesn't have any built in rollback protection.

Just pull the e-brake with your hand, and reduce it at the same rate you engage the clutch when pulling away up hill. Easy peezy.

Otherwise, just make sure you get really good at not riding your clutch for any maneuvers. It's easy to burn them out if you're using your clutch to make up for bad driving habits.

Don't money shift it. That's when you feel like racing and you slam it into second from first, then from second into what you think is third but is actually first again.

When approaching a light or stop sign, smoothly press down the clutch and break pedal together. If it's a red light where you might be for a while, pop the gear into neutral and let go of the clutch.

I was taught (rightfully or not) that holding down the clutch too long can damage it.

Don't money shift it, pay attention to the road.

Everything has been said here

I just wanted to say welcome to the club! Driving will be fun again :)

You're going to drive it without lessons? Is that legal where you live? I'm confused about the question

just buy a new clutch. you'll use it.

Driving is complex. Knowing what to pay attention to when takes time to learn.

I recommend not trying to drive a manual until you’ve already learned the basics in an automatic. In my opinion, learning to drive AND learning how to handle a manual transmission is too much at once.