One other comment - you say your last step was putting the car in neutral. I assume you just left off the last steps, which should have been
The handbrake isn’t enough to hold the car in place reliably.
the transmission by abusing the friction point like that
Since the clutch is not the transmission, whoever told you this disqualified themselves from the get-go.
I mean … Uber.
Yeah: right, wrong, or indifferent, I would have done exactly what you did and have – in San Francisco and any number of other hilly environs.
My uncle had about a 1969 VW Fastback when he lived in San Francisco (for years). Forward or reverse, driving or parking, he used the same technique.
When he sold the car after years of doing this, the clutch was still perfectly fine.
Not that the people complaining knew what they were talking about, but the clutch is generally considered part of the transmission in a manual.
The second point - why choose reverse?
I have driven a manual all my life. I rarely engage the gear to augment/backup the hand brake, on hills I do. But when I do, I use 1st gear always.
I can’t see how reverse makes any difference, in the end the engine itself only turns in one direction even if the car is going forwards or backwards.
Huh, ok. Never heard that in many years of driving a stick but it seems you’re right.
Because he was trying to back it uphill?
I believe that part was unrelated to the backing-up, it was about what gear to leave the car in when parking on a downhill slope in general, to ensure it doesn’t roll downhill by itself if the parking brake is insufficient.
Oh. Clearly I should STFU tonight!
I had the “hill-holder clutch” on my first Subaru in the late Seventies, I think.
To be honest, I’m not sure I’ve ever put it in reverse when parking on a hill. It’s just automatic for me to put it in 1st. But every reference I’ve found says use reverse when pointed downhill.
Reverse is recommended for both uphill and downhill because it will be the lowest gear in the transmission and will require the most force to turn the engine if the car rolls.
This makes sense.
That’s not my experience. Reverse is between first and second gear. Perhaps it varies between makes, but on my old E46 BMW:
1st: 4.21
2nd: 2.49
rev: 3.85
I hadn’t really checked the gear ratios on many cars, just picked up this info a long time ago. Probably based on American made cars gas guzzlers of the distant past. It should be the lowest gear, not reverse or 1st based on the which direction you’d roll.
Yeah, it will depend. Two of the three manual transmission cars I’ve owned have had reverse as the lowest gear (1994 Nissan Stanza, 2014 Mazda 3.) My 2004 Mazda 3 had 1st lowest. I have also heard that, in general, reverse is lower geared than first in most cars, but I’ve not seen an actual breakdown.
In that situation, I agree with the general consensus of the thread — what you did was fine, and I would have done the same.
But for the sake of completeness, I’ll mention another solution I saw once, which hasn’t been brought up yet.
Basically this was the same setup; the driver (a Dutch guy) parked facing downhill. After he got out and looked at how his car was situated, he decided he wanted to adjust himself backward in the space, closer to the car behind him.
Instead of fiddling with the handbrake, he used the regular foot brake and eased himself slowly forward in the space until his front bumper gently touched the bumper of the car in front of him. Then he took his foot entirely off the brake, resting his car against the car ahead. Then, with his own car safely stationary, he engaged the clutch and backed away, up into the middle of the spot.
I guess it’s sort of a practical-minded solution, and it did work. Personally, though, I would not have trusted an unknown car’s parking brake to bear the weight of two cars like that, even for a few seconds, and it was kind of stressful to watch.
I would have done what the OP did. As for:
P.J. O’Rourke in How to DRIVE FAST on DRUGS while getting your WING-WANG SQUEEZED and not SPILL YOUR DRINK offered this sage advice:
This is extremely important, and there’s a lot of debate on this subject — about what kind of car handles best. Some say a front-engined car; some say a rear-engined car. I say a rented car. Nothing handles better than a rented car. You can go faster, turn corners sharper, and put the transmission into reverse while going forward at a higher rate of speed in a rented car than in any other kind. You can also park without looking, and can use the trunk as an ice chest. Another thing about a rented car is that it’s an all-terrain vehicle. Mud, snow, water, woods — you can take a rented car anywhere. True, you can’t always get it back, but that’s not your problem, is it?
As an European who lives in steep surroundings and frowns upon automatic gearboxes, you did absolutely nothing wrong. Many inexperienced drivers would probably spin it up to 3000 or even 4000 rpm to the point where you can actually smell the heated clutch (no big deal if you’re not torturing it for longer than a few seconds).
The only detail at the very end: don’t put the car in neutral. Leave it in gear -first, reverse, doesn’t matter. In case your handbrake fails while you’re not around.
God, no.
Different countries, different driving culture. Perhaps the Dutch are doing it (I know Italians do) but if the driver of the other car was there he could have been very annoyed and looking for scratches. In some people’s heads mild contact = car crash. And as you rightfully pointed out, what if that cars handbrake was unreliable?