Gas - $1.72 a US gallon

[Lord Orwell]

But the price didn't move before Thanksgiving.

Take a look at the date of my post, yesterday at 8am. Which means Monday night, of this current week, the price was still at $1.49. It did not rise until yesterday morning. This rise in price does not correlate to the Thanksgiving holiday, since most people were home on Sunday night to prepare for work on Monday. Hence the reason I'm so confused as to why the price jumped now.

maybe not where you live. But it went up 20 cents a gallon the day before thanksgiving where i live. Maybe your station was behind the times.

[InvisibleDuncan]

It's dropped to £0.89 a litre here.

[nemaroller]

Srsly? I've never had issues with that.... in fact, that's usually the easiest part.... stick it in second, and release the clutch..... and jsut let the engine take it from there..... no brake, no gas.... traffic jsut creeps along at a steady pace.... -tg

IF traffic creeps at a steady pace! More often than not, one encounters stop n' go traffic, where you would constantly have to keep punching in the clutch, and taking it into neutral, then back into 1st.

Perhaps drivers wore their clutches out too fast - and then the lasting impression was the car couldn't handle abuse and that the clutch was cheaply made - affecting the image quality of the automaker - and automakers would have a hard time slapping a 100,000 mile warranty on a mechanical drivetrain part that has such user interaction.

An Automatic transmission on the other hand can be programmed to shift with the proper timing to reduce wear on the engine and transmission - and and with faster speed than any user could shift a manual transmission.

I have an automatic now, and I still like having my right hand on the shifter, even though I only ever use it to hold the transmission in 3rd a bit longer when accelerating from stop-lights before letting it go to 4th (Drive).

[Lord Orwell]

i used to be a mechanic and i have never personally had to ever replace a clutch in my own vehicle. However we put a brand new clutch in a toyota we sold and the woman brought it back two weeks later. She had managed to physically break one of the springs completely out of the clutch and it was lodged in the pressure plate so the clutch wouldn't ever release fully.