Manual Transmission - Help settle this debate....manual driving: 101

Since I was taught how to drive a stick, it's always been "make sure you always press the clutch to the FLOOR, always"

My co-worker, says that is wrong. When you shift (normal driving) you shouldn't need to press the clutch all the way everytime. Just press it pass the sweet spot.

My car has tick master and McLeod rst twin. The clutch is pretty high and so is the engagement. So I tried his method and the car did shift a LOT smoother and had much less jerking on the shifts. This is pressing the clutch about half way down the travel.

Id like to hear some views on this!

I would want the clutch to be fully disengaged before pulling it into the next gear.

With a manual transmission with synchros, you are simply disengaging the the input shaft from the engine to allow the gear speed in the transmission to match the next gear selection. How you do that depends on your clutch, engine speed etc. You only need to push the clutch in far enough to make the synchronization easy on the synchros, forks, etc. Technically, with careful feathering of the gas you shift without the clutch at all, just match the engine speed to the gear speed.

So do you need to always push the clutch all the way to floor? No, just far enough, and that depends on you set up.

Does one way put more wear on the trans/clutch than the other?

If you have the clutch adjusted to high and you always push the clutch all the way down you could damage it, or so I've heard. Since you have a tick master, I would adjust the pedal to where full engagement is right at the floor. What I mean is adjust it as far down as you can while still allowing the clutch to fully disengage.