What happens if I turn my car off at high speed and turn it back on? Can I break something?
In: Other
You won’t implicitly break or hurt anything. You’ll lose your power steering while the engine is off, and only have 1 or 2 braking attempts before losing the power brakes — but you’ll still be able to steer and brake some, and nothing on the car gets harmed.
You say “at high speed,” so if you’re going fast enough you definitely don’t have to put your car in neutral to restart it — just turn the key back to the “on” or “run” position, and the engine start firing again. Especially in a manual transmission, the engine will still be turning at a normal speed, (since it’s connected to the wheels which are turning); in an automatic transmission, if you’re going fast enough then the same thing will be true, but the connection between the engine and wheels isn’t as direct, so if you’re going too slowly then the engine might not be turning fast enough. (This is basically why you can easily push-start a manual transmission car, but not an automatic transmission one.)
Otherwise, you’ll have turned off all of your other accessories, etc., but that doesn’t hurt them at all.
So, because of the steering/braking thing, you want to be careful about the conditions when you try this, but otherwise, go for it.
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