Starting on a Hill
There’s about 3 or 4 steep hills where I live. When I bought the car, I burned the clutch almost every time so I practiced on a more gradual hill and it never really got any better. The clutch was not going to last long. After a few months I tried holding position using the emergency brake and that was a breakthrough. No more burning the clutch. So a few more months passed and I tried to do the same thing with the brake pedal. Wow, that worked perfectly and that’s what I do now.
You just raise the RPM a little while holding your left foot on the brake. Then let off the brake and the car moves forward until you get to about 6PMH which is the speed that the clutch is fully engaged and you can hit the gas hard.
You can hit the gas hard from a standstill and that’s ok too but you never want to transition from slowly moving off the line and hit the gas hard before reaching 6MPH or the clutch will slip.
I never could find any suggestions for this anywhere online so here’s my 2 cents worth. It applies to my 2009 and may be completely different for a 2006-2008. One thing I notice is that people suggest letting off the gas slightly when shifting. I don’t need to do this but maybe because of the differences for different years. I can even use the Auto mode and it works ok but it only gets used once in a while for mainly for testing purposes.
Driving in Traffic
This is never great but it’s not that bad if you get in a habit of leaving 2 car lengths in front before moving. Then pull up close to the car in front. This cuts the times you engage the clutch in about half.