Long story short: I’m (24M) American, and I’m visiting my long-distance Romanian boyfriend for the first time soon. In Romania, most cars are manual - including all the ones owned by my boyfriend’s family (I’ll be staying with them). I’ve never driven a manual before. His dad told me he can give me a quick lesson, and that I’m welcome to use their cars if I want; otherwise, I can rent an automatic. I don’t have access to any manual cars here in the U.S. to practice on, so I’m not sure what to do.
There’s always a few topics that bring the most annoying people out and manual driving is one of them.
No a learner isn’t going to destroy a clutch. You could also grind a gear a dozen times in a learner session and still not strip it.
These types of shitty comments only keep people from trying new things out of fear or embarrassments.
A learner could destroy a clutch (I’ve seen it, though it was a long time ago when clutches weren’t as good as today), but it’s not likely these days. Plus I’m not going to let a learner destroy a clutch by using a method that helps them really get a feel for it: have them get the car moving without using the gas.
Hard revving and riding the clutch out would be far harder on a clutch than the slipping needed to get moving without touching the gas.