I was about to make a left hand turn, was at a stop, foot on the clutch and didnt realize i put it in third instead of first. let the clutch down to where it grabs and started reving the engine and getting nowhere, for about 4-5 seconds i was like wtf is going on, then realized i was in third, so shifted into first and took off. immediatly after, there was the smell...
i wonder, how many times can you smell your clutch before it breaks? whats cool is this is my third week into driving manual(since i got the car) and now i can actually do hill starts without the p-brake on! and have never had a CEL or clutch slippage(that i know of) but what i did was bad, just wondering HOW bad it was. besides that little incident however the car is still running fine.

 

You hardly did any damage if you did any just doing that one time.

 

yea id have to agree^^..if you are good enough you can take off in 3rd..dunno if its possible on our trannies...but i have seen it be done on other cars and theyve had no problems

 

I used to do it in my f150 all the time and nothing ever happened...

 

I take off in 2nd quite a bit...is there anything wrong with doing this? I never smell clutch and it doesn't stall either.

 

If I am at a redlight or stop sign on a steep hill going down, I usually just start in second. Granted I will let my car drift down before I engage the clutch to get a start moving but I don't use first.

 

Yeah, you're smelling a hot clutch, but not damaged.

 

i have done it twice. 1st time I downshifted from fifth to fifth(was supposed to be third) and floored it as I dumnped the clutch and the revs went up but the speed didn't. The second time I tried to race my brother from and dig while using second and it didnt work out to well.