On manual cars, Why can’t a car start in a higher gear?

1.85K viewsEngineeringOther

As the title says, I know that different shifts mean different gear sizes bein used, but I don’t understand why it makes you unable to start moving the car. I have been able to start a couple of cars on the 2nd shift as an experiment and I understand that I could damage the car and I do it just once for testing purposes but I don’t understand why I cannot do so on other shifts. To clarify, I mean start as in start moving the car and not just turning the car on. Thanks

In: Engineering

46 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Get on your bike and put it in the highest gear (largest gear at pedals to smallest gear at wheel). Now stop pedaling. Now try to pedal again and (if you do get the bike moving) try to accelerate quickly. That is why.

You are viewing 1 out of 46 answers, click here to view all answers.