tankinbeans wrote:Teamwork, you don't understamd why some people call hill-start assist cheating because you don't seem to be a keyboard warrior blowhard. Those of the "if you can't drive exactly like me, and need the car to help in any way, you might as well drive an automatic" like to put people down because they themselves are so insecure as to fail to understand that others really don't care about their supposed prowess. They'll even go so far as to pat themselves on the back because they, apparently, never stall and can drive in every situation perfectly and never experience roll-back on hills; they're wholy ignorable.
Haha thanks Tankin and I can relate. It's not really aimed so much here but on the car club forums people boast about disabling the feature and I really don't get it. It's almost like a braggable achievement to many elitist... I've literally heard about an implementation in the system for Subaru (more specifically the WRX) being obtrusive and I think that would be a good cause to disable it. Some people seem to feel that when it's used it feels like they are dragging the brakes but I really don't feel any odd notions and I deal with it DAILY. As soon as the throttle is depressed any degree it lifts it off.
MH86 wrote:You're totally right about the hill assist being unobtrusive. I had an interesting lesson on how it only holds on a certain grade when I was parallel parking today. Thankfully, the Jetta's clutch is intuitive enough that I was able to lift it to the friction point before rolling into the car behind me. I haven't really driven many other manual cars, but the Jetta seems to be incredibly forgiving, not to mention that it no-gas launches quite easily. While on the subject of no-gas launches, about how many seconds should it take for me to release the clutch fully? I'm currently able to do it smoothly in about 3 seconds; it shakes or stalls if I do it quicker.
I was initially terrified of driving manual, but it's actually really fun. It's a shame I didn't get a manual car years ago.
When I first started I kind of questioned if it enabled or disabled. You don't really take things into account like "marginal" inclines/declines that aren't an obvious hill and this car again will not hill hold unless it reaches a certain thresh hold. I didn't necessarily figure out or even find out what it is, or how it's actually used but I did go to what I would call an obvious "incline" in a parking garage to test the system out. This is also when I pretty much wanted to know how much time I had to react and what would happen if I did absolutely nothing. I'm not too sure how good/bad I am without an assist system like this but I know for a fact that I pretty much have 0 roll back with it. I mean sometimes if I'm lazy and under revving on the gas I might roll an inch or so back at first but I usually get on it and work myself up.
I actually am not a huge fan of my clutch action in my VW (again I don't have a ton of things to compare it too, but before I bought this car I had some test experience in other models and such). I'm pretty sure that our clutches are probably distant cousins or barely related at all but I feel that there is a ton amount of dead pedal travel from being floored to the firewall to the friction point. A lot of people complain about hill starts in this car because of the amount of distance... I feel like communication from the clutch is fairly vague too. It's very soft and really requires MINIMAL pressure to depress which I personally like but maybe that's also why I feel like it's vague also. In other threads I've stated that I have a 35-40 consecutive mile stint that I do across Long Island 2-3 times a week. It's a fair mix of highway to crawling city traffic and sometimes they'll be a stretch of 2 miles where I feel like I'm shuffling back and out of 1st gear probably 30-40 times. I've never felt leg fatigue while driving this car.
For no-gas launches by doing what you're doing you should easily be able to figure out how long you should be in the friction point. You said it shakes or stalls if you do it quicker then 3 seconds? Then do it 4-5
. Listen to your vehicle in that regard... obviously it won't be happy and let you know if you're doing something too quick or wrong. I really only do no-gas launches when crawling in traffic, leaving my driveway, or in parking lot scenarios. If you try and do no-gas launches on Long Island you're gonna get run off the road. That was actually part of my problem with 1st gear stalling in the very beginning. I would attempt to do no-gas launches but get really anxious about it knowing people were "waiting behind me" and I'd go through the friction point too quick because I wanted to go quicker. I'd say 85% of the time I add gas simultaneously with finding the friction point in 1st gear. Nothing crazy (1300-1500 rpm on level ground)... but I feel like it helps me get away quicker, smoother, and more efficiently. Me and my friend who has the 5 speed 1.8 TSI Golf joke about how our shift points and rev ranges are different around here because if we don't rev out more we get the finger and spit on.
