On 6 August 2012 08:39, Sean Breheny wrote: > Just to be clear - I was not suggesting that people should use the > throttle to hold continuously on a hill in either manual or automatic > transmission cars. However, my understanding is that it is considered > good practice to slip the clutch momentarily when starting out uphill > in a manual transmission car. If you don't do that, I think that you > would have to rev the engine up enough so that the flywheel inertia > would prevent the car from stalling when you suddenly let the clutch > out, and this would result in a jerky motion. > I have more experience on manual than on automatic (in Europe it is still much more common to have manual and actually not too many knows how to drive an automatic which may make a little smile to many people here in the US but that is true). Anyway, of course you need to slip the clutch for a moment, as it is either the clutch or the wheel that has to slip to overcome on the different speed from the road to the engine. Actually uphill start is one of the worse nightmare for a beginner driver and it is part of the driving licence test in some countries. But to stay at a traffic or a red light and keep the car like that for a longer period is not a good idea. Also keeping the gearbox in a gear and push the clutch all the way down is not very good as far as I know, but once again I might wrong about this too. One thing for sure, it hurts my leg too much to avoid that and in a traffic jam it is certainly a better thing to use automatic (not as tiring therefore less stress on your nerves and more unlikely to make mistakes which can lead to minor accidents). Tamas --=20 http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist .