eli5: what is actually happening when a manual vehicle stalls?
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When you dump the clutch?
You’re putting full load on the drivetrain while not high enough into the torque band.
Engine at idle doesn’t have a lot of oomph. You gotta juice it up a bit before it gets going. You can start off at idle if you’re really gentle on the clutch, because the slippage will allow the low amount of oomph to slowly build up speed, or you can rev up real high and dump the clutch quick and send a lot of oomph to the tires suddenly (and spin the tires maybe), but small oomph and no slippage is too much for the engine and it stalls out.
Assuming you mean a car with a manual gearbox.
Assuming that stall means the engine needs to be restarted.
Stalling happens when the load on the engine is greater than it is capable of overcoming based on the throttle position (more fuel equals more power).
When taking off from a stop, for example, you need to compensate for added load to the engine as you are releasing the clutch by giving the engine more fuel.
An engine needs to be spinning to keep itself running. This why you have to spin the engine electrically with a starter to get it going when you start the car.
At its core, when the gas explodes in the chamber, this drives the piston down. If the piston stops before it can can back into position for another explosion to force it down, nothing will happen
A manual transmission is mechanically connected to the crankshaft via the clutch and flywheel. What happens when you stall it is that the engine is not making enough power to turn the wheels and the wheels (through the transmission) stop the engine from turning.
This is a very generic answer: You have to feed it enough gas so that it can run. For many reasons if the amount of gas going in isn’t enough to keep the car running it, it dies out. The chugging is sorta like it’s getting just enough, then not enough, but wait there’s enough, but no not enough and at a certain point the min amount of fuel isn’t provided in time. This can happen if there’s clogged fuel injectors (or carburetor) or if the load is too much and you’re not pushing gas pedal enough.
There are other reasons it can stall but this is the most basic.
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Engine’s need to spin at a minimum of say 500-1000 revolutions per minute to keep working. A clutch is used as a way to keep the engine running, but allows devices like cars or farm equipment to start and stop without the engine stopping. You have 3 plates. The flywheel, clutch disk and pressure plate. When you push the clutch pedal (lever, button however it’s set up) it takes pressure off the pressure plate and allows the 3 plates to move separately. When you stop pressing the clutch the 3 are pushed together and move whatever is being powered. If you have a running engine, and let the clutch grab hold too fast, or the thing you want to move doesn’t move the way you expect (brakes on, on a hill, something is broken) the engine can’t spin and it comes to a stop aka stalled out.
Your car’s engine is only so strong. There is some point where, if the force required to turn your car’s wheels is too much, the engine will simply stop spinning. It just can’t do it.
“Stalling” is the fancy term they use for any situation where a running engine unexpectedly stops. Putting too much load on it is just one way to do that.
You can potentially put too much load on your car’s engine if you try to make it accelerate too quickly in too high of a gear. Gearshifts in cars are tradeoffs between *oomf* and *speed*. If you are in a situation where you need *oomf*, such as climbing a hill, pulling a trailer, or getting up to speed, but you’re in the *speed* gear, you may overwhelm the engine and cause it to stall.
Ever ride a 10 speed. You’ll stall if you go up a hill in a high gear. Stalling means your leg wasn’t able to generate enough leverage to turn the wheel. Same with an engine, usually the gear was too high, or the engine didn’t have enough gas. If the engine doesn’t have enough torque to spin it’ll stall because it can’t maintain the 4 stroke cycle that’s needed to keep the engine running.
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