Hello everyone, Newbie here. I just picked up a 05 roadster limited with 19k miles. Either I am not using the auto stick correctly or its just over rated. It feels just like a regular automatic trany that I would shift manualy. What am I missing? I don't get all the hype over the autostick. I do love the car though and am having a blast driving it.

 

First ... welcome to the greatest forum. There are people here that will help you with ANY question you might have, so don't be shy!
Second .... welcome to your new "permagrin"

As far as the auto stick goes, unless you're a true old time traditionalist, you'll learn to love it. I have an SRT, and that's all they offered with it. I'm glad that this was the case. You can manually tap the lever and start in first, tap it again whenever you want 2nd (I know you got this concept) and so forth, or just keep in in drive and let the unit do the auto shifting. So far, so good!
NOW ... lets say you're accumulating a lot of brake dust and you don't like it to add up too fast, you can tap the shift lever down in speed increments to let the car almost come to a dead stop. Of course you have to give yourself room to do this, and be aware that anyone in back of you won't see your brake lights till the very end. I utilize my engine braking feature quite often. The tranny in our cars are built to take this right at hand.
NOW ... lets assume you'd like to run the car from a dead stop and see what the car and you can do. Hold your foot on the brake pedal and run your RPMs up to @1500 to 1800. Before you do this, put your Autostick in 1st gear, and take your hand off the shift lever. If you hold the shift lever you'll probably shift it by accident, so don't leave you hand on the lever. Release your brake and punch the accelerator all the way to the floor board, and keep it there. Your tranny will automatically shift through the gears (1st to 2nd to 3rd to 4th to 5th) at the redline. Generally this will give you your best 1/4 mile run. Most important, do this safely for you and others. You might want to reset your throttle once in a while also. (post on how to do this is on the forum ... just search for "throttle reset". This makes your accelerator pedal much more responsive. I'm sure that there may be more info from others, but this might help some.

 

Yo! Welcome new dude!
I use my auto-stick so much I may as well have a manual transmission. Play with it (sounds dirty) and you will get the hang of it. Car is designed so that you can't hurt it by miss-shifting. If you try to force it into 1st while at 70mph it won't let ya. It will downshift at a rate safe for the car.

Go ahead, play with it!

And play with the SEARCH function and do a LOT of reading on the forum TONS of info here!

 

Hey ... if God didn't want you to play with it, he'd have made your arms much shorter .....