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

Imagine a standard flight of stairs in a two story house. You want to climb up those stairs. Picture trying to climb up those stairs in two strides (covering 7 stairs per stride). Now picture climbing up those stairs in 14 strides (covering 1 stair per stride). One stair per stride is the equivalent of starting to drive in 1st gear, while 7 stairs in one stride is the equivalent of starting to drive in a much higher gear.

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