mlees: Scary story. I’m glad you seem to have come through it (mostly) unscathed.
What does FTW mean?
Nitpick: Fenders are in the front. Quarter panels are in the rear. Qatar panels are in the Middle East.
Hmmm … “For those wondering” maybe?
I came out with a sprained wrist only. I feel I got lucky in that I didn’t get hurt worse.
Umm… It was supposed to be “For what it’s worth” (fwiw). I don’t know why it came out ftw (for the win). :smack: Looks like the accident made me senile.
I don’t claim to be a great driver, merely an average one. I am sure there are drivers here who could have recovered from a spin.
I actually don’t know if my accident is typical of what happens in a deliberate pit maneuver done by police, I have assumed it was. My apologies if it is not.
I only related my anecdote to support my assertion and belief that doing something (like pressing the clutch) while under surprise/stress is not as automatic as it 'aught to be, for “merely average” drivers. (I think that if I did press the clutch while in the spin, my car would have come to rest right after finishing the spin. With the car still in gear, it lurched across the freeway to strike the center median.) I previously had no problem finding the clutch in “regular” surprise situations, like some car in front of me stopping suddenly. But being in a full spin-out was so outside my experience, the automatic brake/clutch response was delayed.
Also, in my case, my car did not stall from the spin.
This is about 1/2 right. The sprag cannot transmit enough power in the backwards direction to stall an engine. But the spag (also known as a one way clutch) don’t work alone.
Briefly (mainly because I don’t feel like writing an entire book on how an automatic trans works)
Inside a auto trans there are clutches that lock two parts of a planetary gear set together in a particular gear (for example the planetary gear for an overdrive would be locked together in all of the gears except overdrive)* This clutch pack is not super strong, it can’t hold the entire torque of the engine by itself. so the transmission applies a one way (sprag) clutch to back up the clutch and prevent the clutches from burning out.
So the output shaft of the transmission over running the input shaft won’t stall the engine due to the sprag clutch, but the clutch pack will transmit the power back to the torque converter. If the torque converter puts enough load on the engine, it can cause a stall, but not from the one way clutch.**
*when two parts of a planetary gear set are locked, the entire set turns as if it were a solid shaft.
** Totally useless piece of automotive trivia.
As I explained above The one way clutch in an auto trans only work when going forward. But what about going backwards? In the owner’s manual for a Volvo 240 turbo there was a note that if you were reversing in turbo boost the transmission might slip and this is normal and does not indicate a fault in the transmission.
Wow. to overpower the transmission you would pretty much have to have it floored in reverse to get turbo boost and the engine speed over 3,000 RPM. I don’t know about you, but I don’t ever recall backing my car up with my foot to the floor at 3,000 + RPM. :eek:
yet more proof that all Swedes are crazy.