POTW: 2010 Mazda 3S

As you probably guessed this week is a picture of my new car. It's a 2010 Mazda 3s with manual transmission. First car with manual and after a few days it's nice not stalling every other time I move. I was going to make a long post about tips for driving a manual but really it's mainly time. Spent 5 or 6 hours in it the first day in parking lots. I think I've put 150 miles on it before the weekend ended. Only tip I'll give since it was a revelation to me was a forum posting with A guide to smooth starts. Before that I just started from the floor and just slowly let clutch out as I was touching the gas. It worked but really slow and you're prone to rolling back a lot. With this method I go to the friction point before letting of the brake so the car has some resistance to going backwards. Just enough so I can get my foot on the gas. I was horrified of hills until I read this. I also learned the parking brake method just in case but I could do a pretty steep hill by me without the parking brake just fine.

This was taken at a nearby metropark (big creek). I drove along for a while trying to find a good spot. I was trying to find a place that had some sharp turns but also where I don't have to worry about being hit. Well the road was pretty straight so I didn't have to worry about visibility. So I just parked somewhere with some cover and took a few pictures. Only thing I made sure was that I lined up horizontally with the car which was tilted pretty far. Not happy with all the reflections since it makes the picture too busy for me. Next time need to find a good shady place to minimize reflections. Actually it's probably the leaves that are making it so "busy" looking. Also looking at it now it may have looked well to have a flash underneath the car to get rid of the shadow, o well.

I'll probably end up making a new section on the site for the car. I don't plan on doing a lot of modifications to it, just a few to improve visibility and personalize it a little. Maybe I'll comment in a few months how the manual transmission is. Right now I love it but I just like the car in general thus far.