Originally Posted by Venthos
Well, I gave it a try. My sister's friend has a Neon SRT4. He knows all about me ordering a Challenger and was actually pretty excited to let me learn a bit on his car. Was quite grateful for his willingness to let me try it out.
He said he has an aftermarket clutch and I believe transmission as well, and said it is much less forgiving than a stock set so if I can learn on his car I'd be set. After a bit of tooling around in a parking lot and then a subdivision I have to say it's pretty fun. The most difficult part seemed to be getting off the line from a dead stop. Upshifting and downshifting was easy.
After I got the hang of it I was able to reliably start off without stalling the thing from there on out, but I definitely have room to make it smoother. Not buckin' and jerkin' around wildly when I take off but it could be smoother.
Have yet to take it around on surface roads but getting familiar with it and more comfortable with it. I'm definitely teetering towards a manual now...
Good for you, but honestly, you are putting too much thought into it. You saw how quickly yoiu learned how to drive a car with an aftermarket clutch setup on a high widing 4 cylinder. It will be 10x easier on the stock challenger with the torque to help get you moving.
The any questions you should be asking yourself is:
1. Am I driving in heavy traffic or commute in heavy traffic.
2. Do I plan to drag race this car is a bracket race style format where consistently is more important that trap times. Im guessing not.
Once you get the hang of the manual, you will wonder why you ever even considered the auto, for this particular car anyway. There is only one thing that compares with dumping the clutch at 4000 RPM and that is speed shifing at 5500 RPM!!!!!
