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

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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

It’s a bit like pushing your car up a ramp. To get to the same height, you could either use a long, flat ramp, or a short, steep one. The flat ramp is like a low gear – you use a small force over a long time/distance. The steep ramp is like a high gear – it’s a shorter time/distance, but you need a much larger force to even move at all.

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