On cars with manual transmissions, when in low gear (typically 1 or 2), why does accelerating and then taking your foot off the gas make the car lurch forward with that uneven, jerking motion?

Question

Why wouldn’t the car just decelerate smoothly when you take your foot off the gas? And why does it often continue even if you step on the gas again?

In: Engineering

Answer 1

It’s called backlash. It’s kind of abusive to the car but in racing it helps you slow down for the corners. It’s really not a great thing to do to your car it puts unneeded stress on many components. I’m not sure how deep or technical of an answer you want but an analogy is two friends pulling on a rope playing tug of war and one of them suddenly let’s go