April 8, 2014 • 22 mins
As you're driving your car, you can imagine that it would be very easy to move the shifter into the "R" position at any time. You probably would never even consider giving in to your curiosity, but ... what would happen? Listen in to learn more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Go behind the Wheel, under the hood and beyond with
car stuff from house stuff works dot com. Everyone, welcome
to the podcast. I'm Scott Benjamin. I'm Ben Bull And
then I got a question for you, all right, Scott, shoot,
all right? So my question is this. Have you ever
been just driving down the road and you have to wonder,
all right, well, comfortable cruising along here, But what if,
(00:25):
just what if I I just jammed my car and
the reverse would it? Would it in a cartoon way,
as you'd like to say, would it cartoonishly? Just stop
immediately and reverse back in the traffic behind me? Or
would it that would have created kind of a funny
pattern on the ground, on the ground as the wheel
started to go backwards. What would happen? I would shift
in the reverse while I was driving at highway speed.
I think about it all the time, and I'm glad
(00:48):
that we're bringing it up today because honestly, every time
I'm driving home, man, my hand just hesitates for a second.
I wonder if is today the day? Am I going
to do it? Am I going to do it today? Yet?
Just might be the time. But you know, I can
tell you that you should not do that and there's
a lot of good reasons and people that have have
kind of tested all this. So so we'll talk about
(01:08):
that today. And um, we're joking a little bit, of course.
I'm not on some razor edge to uh to doing
something very stupid with a car? Are you that involves
the shifting in reverse? I had to qualify it there,
Are you sure? Yeah, he's got the intervention episode. I
could be though, because you know, I think a lot
(01:29):
of people have had kind of that thought, is that, yeah,
what happens and what happens, and and really, how are
you ever gonna know what happens unless you really do it?
So there's this there's this curiosity, like human curiosity just
wonders what would happen? But you know better than to
do it. You know that you don't want to do
it because your your head is also telling you I
shouldn't do this because I know what. Transmission is expensive
if I screw something up, you know, car, a car
(01:51):
is expensive no matter what. Mechanical repairs, very very costly.
And something like this when you're talking about transmission, possible
engine damage, axle, da mento, whatever it causes, Um, that's
gonna be expensive, you know, what's gonna be expensive? So, um,
I don't know. It's something that people think about, I know,
but hopefully no one is ever really going to do
this right, And we have a we have some fairly
(02:16):
simple and persuasive explanations about this too, uh that have
changed along with the evolution of car technology. Right, Yeah,
that's right, And it's changed over the years. And I'll
tell you the way it's changed, because there's some some
modern advances. I guess if you want to put it
that way. Really, I mean, it seems pretty simple really
when we when we talk about it. But but we'll
get to it. I mean, I know that you know,
people are staring. It's people really are though they're they're
(02:38):
staring at that that shift nab or that shifted you know,
that the automatic and it's just like, well, there's two
cliques north and uh and I'm in the reverse. I
wonder what happens. It's just it's just like that old um,
that old gag of the big red button that says,
do not push exactly and how long can you resist?
How long can you resist doing it? But um, the
(02:58):
good news is, I guess you want to just fill
in film in with a good. Yeah. The good news
is if you try to do this at highway speeds,
you simply wouldn't be able to get your card reverse. No,
it's just not gonna work. And that's because consider if
you consider if you will a manual transmission, if you're
driving a manual transmission, then the reverse gear on your
(03:20):
vehicle is actually it's pretty simple. It's not rocket science.
And a lot of vehicles no, definitely not. There's just
you know, everybody knows that the transmission is you got
the shaft gets its power from the engine. It has
teeth on it that are used to engage reverse. So
there's another shaft I'll drive the wheels, and it also
has teeth on it that are used for reverse. And
(03:42):
one of the key points of this is they're turning
in opposite directions. Right, yeah, very good point. So when
you when you engage reverse, all that happens is that
there's another gear that literally pushes in between these two
shafts and engages those two sets of teeth. This gear
slides its own teeth in to match the teeth of
(04:03):
those chafts and then it engages them in Boom, you've
got reverse exactly. So you said that you know, there's
one chef that the engine power and one cheft that's
two wheels. And as you can imagine, you know, it's
going in. It's in forward motion, right, so they're they're
turning in opposite direction. As you can just picture this
gear actually literally physically dropping into place between not dropping,
I guess, sliding into place between between these two and
(04:24):
trying to match up, and it's just not gonna happen
because they're going too fast. Yeah, there's no sync row
on this or anything like that. I mean it really.
I guess if the sink row that you were thinking
about is the way that the gears are cut. Um,
A lot of times a reverse gear is cut with
straight teeth. I don't know if that's still the case anymore.
Maybe they are cut in in uh conical fashion. Yeah,
but we know back in the day they were straight. Yeah.
(04:45):
And you know what, that's a good example. I want
to tell you something about this because just recently, and
I think I mentioned this, my neighbor has that old
and the Model A. It's a it's actually a thirty
one Model A Victoria and it was his father's car
that was restored and he, you know, he's told me
the story about this this weekend. Uh, this past weekend,
(05:05):
I was out doing yard work and he was just
trying to get it out and stretch it for a
little bit, you know, and he's backing out of the driveway.
So I talked to him about it, and he said
that his dad bought this car after he and some
friends had bought another vehicle or had gone to the
World's Fair. I guess at some point in one of
these things, like a you know, spring break road trip
type thing, they slept in it, did everything in this car,
and then when he came back, he wanted to buy
(05:26):
one and restore it. So he bought a parts car
which was really torn apart to nothing, and he built
this car. So he kind of restored it, I guess
in that way he built, he built it, and then
now he owns it. And he took me for a ride,
and all the way, even even shifting forward gears, we
were grinding the gears like crazy, and I've kind of
given him a sideways look like what's going on here,
you know, because he's he's a good driver. I mean,
(05:48):
he's better at this than than than that. And he
he said, hey, by the way, this thing has completely
straight gears on it. It's it's straight cut gears. They
just don't mesh together all that well. You have to really,
you have to match the ReBs and you have to
be able popping in exactly, he was double clutching the
whole time. He's double clutching, and so every gear, almost
every gear resulted in a grinding sound. And I can
(06:08):
imagine that you know, this is this is the way
that trying to get into reverse would be only even
more difficult in any compared to standard car um Have
you ever tried shifting your car in reverse while your
car is still rolling? You have a manual? You ever
have a manual transmission? Viewa in a manual? Yeah? Yeah, now,
because I've I've done this too. You pushing the clutch,
you start to roll a little bit down the driveway backwards,
(06:29):
and then you want to put the car in reverse.
Doesn't work that way. You gotta stop the car, put
it in reverse, and then you can you know, can
see that's the That's the thing though, for the vast
majority of cases plus the only time you will be
able to engage reverse on any vehicle is when it
is stationary, stationary or at minimum, and I think some
(06:51):
of these even go as high as like between three
and five miles. Now, shifting and reverse at five miles
per hour, that's a bad idea. Shifting and reverse at
three miles per hour is a bad idea. I think
the only time you should shift in reverse is when
you're at a dead stop, because it would be such
an abrupt motion to go from three miles per hour
to reverse, because that's what you do, you'd instantly go backwards. Um,
(07:13):
it's just a bad, bad idea. I don't think it's
it's something and a lot of a lot of manufacturers
are creating systems that won't allow that to happen. Now. Um,
so I can't think of before we go into that,
though I do have to say that we have to
put in a caveat man. I can't believe I didn't
even think about this. But for the modern age, if
if you were listening to car stuff, first thank you,
(07:35):
and you're driving, uh, the thing we have to say
is drive safe. Don't let this episode make you think
that in any way it's a good idea to go
and reverse. Never do it. Never do it on the
off chance that's something bad happens. Your transmission is not
going to explode because you're probably not going to be
able to do it, but um, just don't do it. Yeah.
(07:57):
The damage that you'll cause, I mean, even if it's minor,
just been trying it, is that it is not going
to be a good idea. I mean, you're gonna have
some type of damage if you if you do this,
and imagine the uh the social damage if you're riding
with your friends and you go, hey, yeah, i'm a
wild card, I'm crazy. Let's shift your reverse and uh,
it just makes it just makes a bad grind sound
and nothing really happens. Yeah, there's like a buzzing sound
(08:19):
almost you like a like a whirring sound, and it's
it's hard to explain. It's almost like almost like that
drill that we hear upstairs sometimes in the studio. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
somewhere between um grinding gears and the dentist drill. Yeah.
That's that's right, that's a that's a good explanation, Ben.
It's it's similar to that. Now a lot of people
have said, you know, I accidentally shifted into it, you know,
my knee bumped the shift or whatever, and that's possible happen,
(08:42):
and that's when you're gonna hear that that that buzzing sound. Um. Also,
you know, some of the older transmissions, the manual transmissions,
if you think about it, a lot of these had,
you know, a ring or something like that, a lockout
ring that you would have to pull up with your
with your index finger in your middle finger and pull
that up as you reverse reverse. That's a good before
we talk about the rest of lockout rings, Yeah, because
(09:04):
you know, we see this kind of go on the
modern day. Right. Um, I wanted to tell you about
something that I'm pretty excited about. What's that? Uh So,
speaking of fantastic segways, we're talking about lockouts. We're back
to lockouts. So you were saying earlier a really good,
really good note there about pulling the lockout ring for reverse. Yeah,
(09:26):
there were there for a while, have been some mechanical
lockouts now. Um, the shifter you know, and some of
the older manual transmissions did have some of those pull
up tabs, you know, like right below the shift now
where you would grasp with your with your two fingers
and pull it up as you shift into reverse. Right, Yeah,
I think you're you're you're accustomed with that probably right,
or you would have to push down on the shifter
to access reverse gears, so like you know, you had
(09:47):
to push it over, push it down, and then in
the reverse, and that's the way kind of you physically
were locked out of reverse gear. The same thing would happen.
You know, you would you would bump in. It would
just feel like you couldn't get into that. You just
wouldn't go. Even if you were at speed you were
trying to do that. Let's say you were you're going
fifty miles an hour and you're trying to push down
this shifter and and push it into reverse. You would
still get that grinding, worrying sound. You wouldn't be able
(10:08):
to get it physically into reverse gear anyway. So you know,
in that case, it still wouldn't work. But now recently,
and this doesn't go back. It actually goes back farther
than you might think. But there have been some electronic
lockouts as well, And I was reading about a few
Chevrolet examples, and some of these mentioned a reverse inhibit
or reverse lockout solenoid that that this thing uses. Now,
(10:30):
these are on electronic automatic transmissions, typically in that UM
the PCM or the power Power Control Module operates as uh, well,
it operates the solenoid that is actually keeping you locked
out of reverse gear. So it's grounded. Um. You know,
the circuits grounded based on vehicle speeds. So you know,
if you're going three to five miles per hour or
even slower, um the three to five miles or slower,
(10:55):
the reverse solenoid will allow you to shift into reverse.
But if you're going faster than that, it keeps you
locked out. It's a it's a physical barrier that's put
up that that prevents you from shifting in reverse. So
you know, once the solenoid is energized and mechanically blocks
you from shifting into reverse position, that's something that you're
not gonna be able to accomplish at all. I mean,
you're gonna have to find a way to physically override that.
(11:16):
There's gonna have to be some uh some shenanigans pulled
with your your transmission in order to do it. And
you know, it's just something you're not gonna be able
to do really. I mean, if you're I guess, if
you're a mechanic and you wanted to really play around
with that, you could make it happen, but then again,
you're not gonna physically be able to get it into reverse. Again,
for the reasons that we talked about prior. This is
just a safety that's put in place so that you
don't cause any you know, inadvertent damage to you don't
(11:39):
have the accidental bump. I have a little anecdote with that. Okay, so, uh,
one of my friends who shall remain nameless, and one
of his kids, he was driving, right, and he's got
a kid, who is this This kid is awesome, all right, Scott,
let me just say that before I say anything else
about what this kid did. Okay, this kid is awesome.
(12:01):
But this kid is pretty impulsive too, So he's very
he was very young at the time, and he was
going through this period where he's just old enough to
be out of a car seat, but you had to
have the child locks on it all time because this
little monster would open the door, tried duck and roll
in everything. And uh, this was not me. I'm it
(12:23):
was totally not me. This is a friend of mine,
his kid, So his kid, Uh, they saw fast and furious.
Probably not appropriate for kid that young, but still a
little guy loves cars. Uh, this kid is now obsessed
with drifting and how drifting works and things like that. Yeah.
So he reached over while the dad's driving, you know,
(12:45):
one day and just tried to grab the stick and
push it, you know, like into reverse or just just
playing with it. You know. He doesn't know how to drive.
He didn't know what he's doing. Um. And then my
buddy said, you know, my heart to my throat and
then out my butt. He's just for a second, and
he said, I heard this grinding, and I thought, is
(13:07):
this how it ends? Reverse? Hit reverse? Yeah, he reverse,
but it didn't work. Of course he got locked out,
of course. And then so the the kid, I think,
didn't get why his dad was just so wildly upset
with him. And here's the here's the other part. Though.
He was telling me, He's like, now, you know, when
(13:27):
I'm driving by myself, I kind of wonder, like, what
would what would happen if I did it? What would
have happened? Yeah, And I say, don't don't try it. Yeah, no,
don't do it. You've already had the example, give it
to you, and that's the only thing that will happen.
Nothing happens. You get that whirring sound and uh and
thankfully no damage would happened, but no, apparently is really brief. Yeah,
if it's real brief, I mean you may get lucky
and nothing will happen, but but don't push it. And um,
(13:50):
you know, I was reading around online and I've got
a few different things here to mention. Um, you know
we talked about the lockouts and stuff like that, right, well,
this is a guy that that wrote in. Now this
just kind of one of those Internet question for hims.
You know, I don't know if it was like Yahoo
question questions or yeah, what is it? Yeahoo answers, I
think that's it. And um, someone wrote in and said
exactly the same thing. What happens if you throw your
(14:10):
car in reverse while driving forward at a high rate
of speed. And you know a lot of the answers were, um,
you know, it just makes a loud, clicking noise until
it stops. But it won't completely traans your engine or
transmission or whatever. It's not good for it. It It will
do some damage. But one person wrote in and said this.
Then this was intriguing to me because it kind of
ties in with kind of this. Uh. The last thing
I guess I want to mention or ask people about
(14:31):
because um, it's a it's kind of a myth or
rumor that I've heard a long time ago. But this
guy wrote in and said that it depends on the
car model, the transmission, etcetera. So he's saying that maybe
it's possible. And he says that I did this once
in my old nineteen fifty seven Chevy and it was
but it was in the nineteen eighties at the time
when I did it, and I did it one time
only he shifted into reverse at speed. He was going
(14:52):
about twenty five miles per hour, and what it did
was it actually made it into reverse. And it's slow.
He said, it slowed down real quick, and he's got
real underlined. It's it's let on real fast before he
could get out of reverse. So maybe he didn't do
it on on on purpose. May it was an accidental shift,
he said before he got it out of reverse. No
damage at all, just able like he was able to
(15:13):
continue driving on like nothing can happen. Now I think
it is, And he says that you know old he said.
He mentioned, of course older cars could take it better.
Many of the cars from the nineteen sixties or the
nineteen seventies even would have puked out their transmissions guts
before you even even did that. So um, he's saying that,
you know, even back in the sixties and seventies, it
wouldn't have been able to do it. But in the
(15:34):
nineteen fifties, somehow he was able to get his what
what was it, a fifty seven fifty seven Chevy is
what he said, only twenty five miles per hour. He's
able to get it into reverse. Now I don't see
how it's possible. I mean, may it was a one
million shot that you know, the gears lined up and
he was able to do it, and he he won
the lottery. It seems like you would have to force
it into gear to be able to do this, so
(15:54):
it doesn't seem accidental to me. Okay, what's your what's
your question? Then? All right, well I just wonder. Okay,
this ties into something that I had that I had
read about, or not read about rather but heard about
from a friend's father. Okay, this is a long time
and this is in high school. A friend's father would
tell me about about doing this. This is like a
car stunt. I guess this is kind of my last
thing I suppose. Um, I just wonder if our listeners
(16:17):
have ever heard of anything like this or if anything
like this is even possible. Now, the guy was from
New Jersey and he was older at the time. He's
probably close to retirement age back when I was in
high school. So I'm trying to picture when this would be.
This would be like the nineteen forties, maybe nineteen fifties,
maybe in New Jersey. And he was talking about something
called either it was either called J hook turns or
(16:40):
a fish hook turn or a fish hook move or
something like that. And what it would do is it
would it would lay down this pattern on the street.
Your your tires would of a fish hook or a
j on the road when you do this. Now, this
is how bad this is. They would go straight down
the street and you know, like headed down the street
really fast and then just jam the carnor. And what
(17:00):
would happen is the wheels would start to spend backwards
as you're still moving forwards, and so that would cause
like a straight line pattern. And then as you continue
to accelerate, because you're now in reverse, you're accelerating and
the car would kind of come to a stop and
then slow down to stop, and then reverse direction. It
would come backwards and then you would let off the
gas and that would be this pattern of like a
(17:21):
fish hook on the street, very narrow, yeah, exactly, a
very narrow fish hook or or or fish exactly, yeah,
just like that. So I'm picture there, right, and I
was thinking, is that even possible? And that's what put
it in my mind, like, you know, is it possible
to even shift in reverse? And apparently it's not. I
wonder if this is just like a tall tale. This
guy was telling me, Well, you know, I don't know
(17:43):
enough about vehicles. I don't either to make a call
on that, but I gotta look into that. I want to.
I know, the website I'm going to go to see.
The only thing that that tells me that this might
have been possible, and I hadn't believed this up until
this point, was this guy being able to shift at
twenty five miles per hour in reverse. But that doesn't
give you the speed that these guys were talking about
(18:03):
to make this j pattern on the road, right, if
they want to mark up the road, they're gonna have
to be going faster in twenty way faster than that.
So I don't think it's even possible. I think it
was just kind of a you know, big stuff talking,
you know that this is what we do back in Jersey,
that kind of thing. I don't know, like maybe it
was maybe there's something to it, man, I don't know.
So that's the question. I don't know. I mean, I'm
trying to figure out how this is possible. But it
(18:25):
was definitely and the and the way that it was
describing me is definitely you were driving jam bit in
reverse and then it would cause this fish hook pattern
as you slow down and then reverse direction, you know,
at a quick rate of speed. Okay, So can you
fish hook pre nineties cars? Yeah? Can you? And and
if you could, I mean, how many times could you
do that before it just decided that that's enough, I'm done?
(18:47):
You know, the transmission blows itself out because really hard
on the mechanical components in a transmission. That's a that's
another good question, and we hope that you guys right
into let us know your thoughts. This again our two
cases where a nineteen fifty seven Chevy that once successfully
went into reverse at twenty miles per hour? Is that
(19:08):
true or not? Yeah? And uh, The second one would
be nineteen cars apparently, um, although we don't know the
maker model here, apparently able to hit reverse a much
higher speeds and going fish looks now, Scott, you're shaking
your head. You say, no way, I think I think
it's just it was just Josh and I think it's
a tall tale. Yeah, that's right. And honestly, you know what,
(19:31):
this whole conversation that we've had with everybody about all
of this from the very beginning, just don't try it.
Don't just don't try it. Just take our word for it.
You're gonna hear a worring noise, is gonna be some
kind of damage if you try and be so anticlimactic.
It really is. Just just please don't do it. Yeah,
there are other stunts you can do in your car
that we can talk about too, But to show you, uh,
(19:51):
how much we like having these questions answered and how
much we love listener mail, let's go ahead and read
something right now. It sounds good. Alright, alright, Scott, this
is another message for us from Facebook, courtesy of Greg
with two Gee's last initial beat. Greg says, hey, guys,
I just listen to your limousine episode and have a
(20:13):
story for you because we asked for some cool limo
stories drink. At the time my wife turned twenty one.
Her mom was working part time as a limo driver.
She could borrow the limo if she wanted, and she
decided to treat my wife to a limo ride to
wherever she wanted to go for her birthday. That's pretty cool, huh.
She came and picked us up, along with some friends
of ours and their kids and my mom. So you're thinking,
(20:36):
what kind of twenty first birthday is this? Right? Good question,
Greg says, I suppose I should also tell you that
my wife happened to be pregnant with her daughter at
the time, so there's not gonna be any drinking on
her part. Instead, we rolled up the Chuck E Cheese
if you're unfamiliar, it's a pizza place for games and
whatnot for kids, and had some pizza in a great
time with the kids. We've got a few head turns
(20:56):
and finger points and good time was had by all.
Keep up the great work listening your podcast on the
way to and from work each day on my forty
minute drive. Let's see, it made a memorable evening for them,
right Yeah? And uh, look, I know that Chucky cheese
is for kids. Um, but I'm such a huge fan
of pizza that I would I would go up there
by myself if it were allowed. Who doesn't love pizza
(21:19):
and video games? Any right? Really? How un american can
you be feeling? How unhuman can you be? I guess right?
So everybody loves pizza, video games, everybody loves limousines. That
sounds like a funny evening. That sounds like funny me, Greg,
Thanks so much for writing to us with an excellent
limo story. It sounds like, uh, it sounds like your
(21:40):
wife's mom was doing some awesome stuff. There's a limo
driver that sounds like an interesting profession. I bet she's
got some good stories. I think that makes you technically
best mom ever for that weekend. I think all limo
drivers have just fascinating stories. Yeah, it is. It's kind
of like a cab drivers too. Man and truckers always
have these amazing stories, slightly different side of life that
(22:01):
they see. Yeah, and we'd like to hear your amazing stories.
We hope you enjoyed our episode on why you cannot
and should not put your car in reverse while you're
at speed uh and we'd like to hear some of
your stories, so tell us about them, Send us a
message or a post on Facebook. Check our Twitter for
continual updates on everything interesting in the world of autos.
(22:23):
Check out our website, of course, car Stuff Show dot com,
or send us your story and topic suggestion directly. Our
email address is our stuff at Discovery dot com. For
more on this and thousands of other topics, is that
how stuff works dot com. Let us know what you think.
Send an email to podcast at how stuff works dot com.
Go behind the Wheel, under the hood and beyond with
car stuff from house stuff works dot com. Everyone, welcome
to the podcast. I'm Scott Benjamin. I'm Ben Bull And
then I got a question for you, all right, Scott, shoot,
all right? So my question is this. Have you ever
been just driving down the road and you have to wonder,
all right, well, comfortable cruising along here, But what if,
(00:25):
just what if I I just jammed my car and
the reverse would it? Would it in a cartoon way,
as you'd like to say, would it cartoonishly? Just stop
immediately and reverse back in the traffic behind me? Or
would it that would have created kind of a funny
pattern on the ground, on the ground as the wheel
started to go backwards. What would happen? I would shift
in the reverse while I was driving at highway speed.
I think about it all the time, and I'm glad
(00:48):
that we're bringing it up today because honestly, every time
I'm driving home, man, my hand just hesitates for a second.
I wonder if is today the day? Am I going
to do it? Am I going to do it today? Yet?
Just might be the time. But you know, I can
tell you that you should not do that and there's
a lot of good reasons and people that have have
kind of tested all this. So so we'll talk about
(01:08):
that today. And um, we're joking a little bit, of course.
I'm not on some razor edge to uh to doing
something very stupid with a car? Are you that involves
the shifting in reverse? I had to qualify it there,
Are you sure? Yeah, he's got the intervention episode. I
could be though, because you know, I think a lot
(01:29):
of people have had kind of that thought, is that, yeah,
what happens and what happens, and and really, how are
you ever gonna know what happens unless you really do it?
So there's this there's this curiosity, like human curiosity just
wonders what would happen? But you know better than to
do it. You know that you don't want to do
it because your your head is also telling you I
shouldn't do this because I know what. Transmission is expensive
if I screw something up, you know, car, a car
(01:51):
is expensive no matter what. Mechanical repairs, very very costly.
And something like this when you're talking about transmission, possible
engine damage, axle, da mento, whatever it causes, Um, that's
gonna be expensive, you know, what's gonna be expensive? So, um,
I don't know. It's something that people think about, I know,
but hopefully no one is ever really going to do
this right, And we have a we have some fairly
(02:16):
simple and persuasive explanations about this too, uh that have
changed along with the evolution of car technology. Right, Yeah,
that's right, And it's changed over the years. And I'll
tell you the way it's changed, because there's some some
modern advances. I guess if you want to put it
that way. Really, I mean, it seems pretty simple really
when we when we talk about it. But but we'll
get to it. I mean, I know that you know,
people are staring. It's people really are though they're they're
(02:38):
staring at that that shift nab or that shifted you know,
that the automatic and it's just like, well, there's two
cliques north and uh and I'm in the reverse. I
wonder what happens. It's just it's just like that old um,
that old gag of the big red button that says,
do not push exactly and how long can you resist?
How long can you resist doing it? But um, the
(02:58):
good news is, I guess you want to just fill
in film in with a good. Yeah. The good news
is if you try to do this at highway speeds,
you simply wouldn't be able to get your card reverse. No,
it's just not gonna work. And that's because consider if
you consider if you will a manual transmission, if you're
driving a manual transmission, then the reverse gear on your
(03:20):
vehicle is actually it's pretty simple. It's not rocket science.
And a lot of vehicles no, definitely not. There's just
you know, everybody knows that the transmission is you got
the shaft gets its power from the engine. It has
teeth on it that are used to engage reverse. So
there's another shaft I'll drive the wheels, and it also
has teeth on it that are used for reverse. And
(03:42):
one of the key points of this is they're turning
in opposite directions. Right, yeah, very good point. So when
you when you engage reverse, all that happens is that
there's another gear that literally pushes in between these two
shafts and engages those two sets of teeth. This gear
slides its own teeth in to match the teeth of
(04:03):
those chafts and then it engages them in Boom, you've
got reverse exactly. So you said that you know, there's
one chef that the engine power and one cheft that's
two wheels. And as you can imagine, you know, it's
going in. It's in forward motion, right, so they're they're
turning in opposite direction. As you can just picture this
gear actually literally physically dropping into place between not dropping,
I guess, sliding into place between between these two and
(04:24):
trying to match up, and it's just not gonna happen
because they're going too fast. Yeah, there's no sync row
on this or anything like that. I mean it really.
I guess if the sink row that you were thinking
about is the way that the gears are cut. Um,
A lot of times a reverse gear is cut with
straight teeth. I don't know if that's still the case anymore.
Maybe they are cut in in uh conical fashion. Yeah,
but we know back in the day they were straight. Yeah.
(04:45):
And you know what, that's a good example. I want
to tell you something about this because just recently, and
I think I mentioned this, my neighbor has that old
and the Model A. It's a it's actually a thirty
one Model A Victoria and it was his father's car
that was restored and he, you know, he's told me
the story about this this weekend. Uh, this past weekend,
(05:05):
I was out doing yard work and he was just
trying to get it out and stretch it for a
little bit, you know, and he's backing out of the driveway.
So I talked to him about it, and he said
that his dad bought this car after he and some
friends had bought another vehicle or had gone to the
World's Fair. I guess at some point in one of
these things, like a you know, spring break road trip
type thing, they slept in it, did everything in this car,
and then when he came back, he wanted to buy
(05:26):
one and restore it. So he bought a parts car
which was really torn apart to nothing, and he built
this car. So he kind of restored it, I guess
in that way he built, he built it, and then
now he owns it. And he took me for a ride,
and all the way, even even shifting forward gears, we
were grinding the gears like crazy, and I've kind of
given him a sideways look like what's going on here,
you know, because he's he's a good driver. I mean,
(05:48):
he's better at this than than than that. And he
he said, hey, by the way, this thing has completely
straight gears on it. It's it's straight cut gears. They
just don't mesh together all that well. You have to really,
you have to match the ReBs and you have to
be able popping in exactly, he was double clutching the
whole time. He's double clutching, and so every gear, almost
every gear resulted in a grinding sound. And I can
(06:08):
imagine that you know, this is this is the way
that trying to get into reverse would be only even
more difficult in any compared to standard car um Have
you ever tried shifting your car in reverse while your
car is still rolling? You have a manual? You ever
have a manual transmission? Viewa in a manual? Yeah? Yeah, now,
because I've I've done this too. You pushing the clutch,
you start to roll a little bit down the driveway backwards,
(06:29):
and then you want to put the car in reverse.
Doesn't work that way. You gotta stop the car, put
it in reverse, and then you can you know, can
see that's the That's the thing though, for the vast
majority of cases plus the only time you will be
able to engage reverse on any vehicle is when it
is stationary, stationary or at minimum, and I think some
(06:51):
of these even go as high as like between three
and five miles. Now, shifting and reverse at five miles
per hour, that's a bad idea. Shifting and reverse at
three miles per hour is a bad idea. I think
the only time you should shift in reverse is when
you're at a dead stop, because it would be such
an abrupt motion to go from three miles per hour
to reverse, because that's what you do, you'd instantly go backwards. Um,
(07:13):
it's just a bad, bad idea. I don't think it's
it's something and a lot of a lot of manufacturers
are creating systems that won't allow that to happen. Now. Um,
so I can't think of before we go into that,
though I do have to say that we have to
put in a caveat man. I can't believe I didn't
even think about this. But for the modern age, if
if you were listening to car stuff, first thank you,
(07:35):
and you're driving, uh, the thing we have to say
is drive safe. Don't let this episode make you think
that in any way it's a good idea to go
and reverse. Never do it. Never do it on the
off chance that's something bad happens. Your transmission is not
going to explode because you're probably not going to be
able to do it, but um, just don't do it. Yeah.
(07:57):
The damage that you'll cause, I mean, even if it's minor,
just been trying it, is that it is not going
to be a good idea. I mean, you're gonna have
some type of damage if you if you do this,
and imagine the uh the social damage if you're riding
with your friends and you go, hey, yeah, i'm a
wild card, I'm crazy. Let's shift your reverse and uh,
it just makes it just makes a bad grind sound
and nothing really happens. Yeah, there's like a buzzing sound
(08:19):
almost you like a like a whirring sound, and it's
it's hard to explain. It's almost like almost like that
drill that we hear upstairs sometimes in the studio. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
somewhere between um grinding gears and the dentist drill. Yeah.
That's that's right, that's a that's a good explanation, Ben.
It's it's similar to that. Now a lot of people
have said, you know, I accidentally shifted into it, you know,
my knee bumped the shift or whatever, and that's possible happen,
(08:42):
and that's when you're gonna hear that that that buzzing sound. Um. Also,
you know, some of the older transmissions, the manual transmissions,
if you think about it, a lot of these had,
you know, a ring or something like that, a lockout
ring that you would have to pull up with your
with your index finger in your middle finger and pull
that up as you reverse reverse. That's a good before
we talk about the rest of lockout rings, Yeah, because
(09:04):
you know, we see this kind of go on the
modern day. Right. Um, I wanted to tell you about
something that I'm pretty excited about. What's that? Uh So,
speaking of fantastic segways, we're talking about lockouts. We're back
to lockouts. So you were saying earlier a really good,
really good note there about pulling the lockout ring for reverse. Yeah,
(09:26):
there were there for a while, have been some mechanical
lockouts now. Um, the shifter you know, and some of
the older manual transmissions did have some of those pull
up tabs, you know, like right below the shift now
where you would grasp with your with your two fingers
and pull it up as you shift into reverse. Right, Yeah,
I think you're you're you're accustomed with that probably right,
or you would have to push down on the shifter
to access reverse gears, so like you know, you had
(09:47):
to push it over, push it down, and then in
the reverse, and that's the way kind of you physically
were locked out of reverse gear. The same thing would happen.
You know, you would you would bump in. It would
just feel like you couldn't get into that. You just
wouldn't go. Even if you were at speed you were
trying to do that. Let's say you were you're going
fifty miles an hour and you're trying to push down
this shifter and and push it into reverse. You would
still get that grinding, worrying sound. You wouldn't be able
(10:08):
to get it physically into reverse gear anyway. So you know,
in that case, it still wouldn't work. But now recently,
and this doesn't go back. It actually goes back farther
than you might think. But there have been some electronic
lockouts as well, And I was reading about a few
Chevrolet examples, and some of these mentioned a reverse inhibit
or reverse lockout solenoid that that this thing uses. Now,
(10:30):
these are on electronic automatic transmissions, typically in that UM
the PCM or the power Power Control Module operates as uh, well,
it operates the solenoid that is actually keeping you locked
out of reverse gear. So it's grounded. Um. You know,
the circuits grounded based on vehicle speeds. So you know,
if you're going three to five miles per hour or
even slower, um the three to five miles or slower,
(10:55):
the reverse solenoid will allow you to shift into reverse.
But if you're going faster than that, it keeps you
locked out. It's a it's a physical barrier that's put
up that that prevents you from shifting in reverse. So
you know, once the solenoid is energized and mechanically blocks
you from shifting into reverse position, that's something that you're
not gonna be able to accomplish at all. I mean,
you're gonna have to find a way to physically override that.
(11:16):
There's gonna have to be some uh some shenanigans pulled
with your your transmission in order to do it. And
you know, it's just something you're not gonna be able
to do really. I mean, if you're I guess, if
you're a mechanic and you wanted to really play around
with that, you could make it happen, but then again,
you're not gonna physically be able to get it into reverse. Again,
for the reasons that we talked about prior. This is
just a safety that's put in place so that you
don't cause any you know, inadvertent damage to you don't
(11:39):
have the accidental bump. I have a little anecdote with that. Okay, so, uh,
one of my friends who shall remain nameless, and one
of his kids, he was driving, right, and he's got
a kid, who is this This kid is awesome, all right, Scott,
let me just say that before I say anything else
about what this kid did. Okay, this kid is awesome.
(12:01):
But this kid is pretty impulsive too, So he's very
he was very young at the time, and he was
going through this period where he's just old enough to
be out of a car seat, but you had to
have the child locks on it all time because this
little monster would open the door, tried duck and roll
in everything. And uh, this was not me. I'm it
(12:23):
was totally not me. This is a friend of mine,
his kid, So his kid, Uh, they saw fast and furious.
Probably not appropriate for kid that young, but still a
little guy loves cars. Uh, this kid is now obsessed
with drifting and how drifting works and things like that. Yeah.
So he reached over while the dad's driving, you know,
(12:45):
one day and just tried to grab the stick and
push it, you know, like into reverse or just just
playing with it. You know. He doesn't know how to drive.
He didn't know what he's doing. Um. And then my
buddy said, you know, my heart to my throat and
then out my butt. He's just for a second, and
he said, I heard this grinding, and I thought, is
(13:07):
this how it ends? Reverse? Hit reverse? Yeah, he reverse,
but it didn't work. Of course he got locked out,
of course. And then so the the kid, I think,
didn't get why his dad was just so wildly upset
with him. And here's the here's the other part. Though.
He was telling me, He's like, now, you know, when
(13:27):
I'm driving by myself, I kind of wonder, like, what
would what would happen if I did it? What would
have happened? Yeah, And I say, don't don't try it. Yeah, no,
don't do it. You've already had the example, give it
to you, and that's the only thing that will happen.
Nothing happens. You get that whirring sound and uh and
thankfully no damage would happened, but no, apparently is really brief. Yeah,
if it's real brief, I mean you may get lucky
and nothing will happen, but but don't push it. And um,
(13:50):
you know, I was reading around online and I've got
a few different things here to mention. Um, you know
we talked about the lockouts and stuff like that, right, well,
this is a guy that that wrote in. Now this
just kind of one of those Internet question for hims.
You know, I don't know if it was like Yahoo
question questions or yeah, what is it? Yeahoo answers, I
think that's it. And um, someone wrote in and said
exactly the same thing. What happens if you throw your
(14:10):
car in reverse while driving forward at a high rate
of speed. And you know a lot of the answers were, um,
you know, it just makes a loud, clicking noise until
it stops. But it won't completely traans your engine or
transmission or whatever. It's not good for it. It It will
do some damage. But one person wrote in and said this.
Then this was intriguing to me because it kind of
ties in with kind of this. Uh. The last thing
I guess I want to mention or ask people about
(14:31):
because um, it's a it's kind of a myth or
rumor that I've heard a long time ago. But this
guy wrote in and said that it depends on the
car model, the transmission, etcetera. So he's saying that maybe
it's possible. And he says that I did this once
in my old nineteen fifty seven Chevy and it was
but it was in the nineteen eighties at the time
when I did it, and I did it one time
only he shifted into reverse at speed. He was going
(14:52):
about twenty five miles per hour, and what it did
was it actually made it into reverse. And it's slow.
He said, it slowed down real quick, and he's got
real underlined. It's it's let on real fast before he
could get out of reverse. So maybe he didn't do
it on on on purpose. May it was an accidental shift,
he said before he got it out of reverse. No
damage at all, just able like he was able to
(15:13):
continue driving on like nothing can happen. Now I think
it is, And he says that you know old he said.
He mentioned, of course older cars could take it better.
Many of the cars from the nineteen sixties or the
nineteen seventies even would have puked out their transmissions guts
before you even even did that. So um, he's saying that,
you know, even back in the sixties and seventies, it
wouldn't have been able to do it. But in the
(15:34):
nineteen fifties, somehow he was able to get his what
what was it, a fifty seven fifty seven Chevy is
what he said, only twenty five miles per hour. He's
able to get it into reverse. Now I don't see
how it's possible. I mean, may it was a one
million shot that you know, the gears lined up and
he was able to do it, and he he won
the lottery. It seems like you would have to force
it into gear to be able to do this, so
(15:54):
it doesn't seem accidental to me. Okay, what's your what's
your question? Then? All right, well I just wonder. Okay,
this ties into something that I had that I had
read about, or not read about rather but heard about
from a friend's father. Okay, this is a long time
and this is in high school. A friend's father would
tell me about about doing this. This is like a
car stunt. I guess this is kind of my last
thing I suppose. Um, I just wonder if our listeners
(16:17):
have ever heard of anything like this or if anything
like this is even possible. Now, the guy was from
New Jersey and he was older at the time. He's
probably close to retirement age back when I was in
high school. So I'm trying to picture when this would be.
This would be like the nineteen forties, maybe nineteen fifties,
maybe in New Jersey. And he was talking about something
called either it was either called J hook turns or
(16:40):
a fish hook turn or a fish hook move or
something like that. And what it would do is it
would it would lay down this pattern on the street.
Your your tires would of a fish hook or a
j on the road when you do this. Now, this
is how bad this is. They would go straight down
the street and you know, like headed down the street
really fast and then just jam the carnor. And what
(17:00):
would happen is the wheels would start to spend backwards
as you're still moving forwards, and so that would cause
like a straight line pattern. And then as you continue
to accelerate, because you're now in reverse, you're accelerating and
the car would kind of come to a stop and
then slow down to stop, and then reverse direction. It
would come backwards and then you would let off the
gas and that would be this pattern of like a
(17:21):
fish hook on the street, very narrow, yeah, exactly, a
very narrow fish hook or or or fish exactly, yeah,
just like that. So I'm picture there, right, and I
was thinking, is that even possible? And that's what put
it in my mind, like, you know, is it possible
to even shift in reverse? And apparently it's not. I
wonder if this is just like a tall tale. This
guy was telling me, Well, you know, I don't know
(17:43):
enough about vehicles. I don't either to make a call
on that, but I gotta look into that. I want to.
I know, the website I'm going to go to see.
The only thing that that tells me that this might
have been possible, and I hadn't believed this up until
this point, was this guy being able to shift at
twenty five miles per hour in reverse. But that doesn't
give you the speed that these guys were talking about
(18:03):
to make this j pattern on the road, right, if
they want to mark up the road, they're gonna have
to be going faster in twenty way faster than that.
So I don't think it's even possible. I think it
was just kind of a you know, big stuff talking,
you know that this is what we do back in Jersey,
that kind of thing. I don't know, like maybe it
was maybe there's something to it, man, I don't know.
So that's the question. I don't know. I mean, I'm
trying to figure out how this is possible. But it
(18:25):
was definitely and the and the way that it was
describing me is definitely you were driving jam bit in
reverse and then it would cause this fish hook pattern
as you slow down and then reverse direction, you know,
at a quick rate of speed. Okay, So can you
fish hook pre nineties cars? Yeah? Can you? And and
if you could, I mean, how many times could you
do that before it just decided that that's enough, I'm done?
(18:47):
You know, the transmission blows itself out because really hard
on the mechanical components in a transmission. That's a that's
another good question, and we hope that you guys right
into let us know your thoughts. This again our two
cases where a nineteen fifty seven Chevy that once successfully
went into reverse at twenty miles per hour? Is that
(19:08):
true or not? Yeah? And uh, The second one would
be nineteen cars apparently, um, although we don't know the
maker model here, apparently able to hit reverse a much
higher speeds and going fish looks now, Scott, you're shaking
your head. You say, no way, I think I think
it's just it was just Josh and I think it's
a tall tale. Yeah, that's right. And honestly, you know what,
(19:31):
this whole conversation that we've had with everybody about all
of this from the very beginning, just don't try it.
Don't just don't try it. Just take our word for it.
You're gonna hear a worring noise, is gonna be some
kind of damage if you try and be so anticlimactic.
It really is. Just just please don't do it. Yeah,
there are other stunts you can do in your car
that we can talk about too, But to show you, uh,
(19:51):
how much we like having these questions answered and how
much we love listener mail, let's go ahead and read
something right now. It sounds good. Alright, alright, Scott, this
is another message for us from Facebook, courtesy of Greg
with two Gee's last initial beat. Greg says, hey, guys,
I just listen to your limousine episode and have a
(20:13):
story for you because we asked for some cool limo
stories drink. At the time my wife turned twenty one.
Her mom was working part time as a limo driver.
She could borrow the limo if she wanted, and she
decided to treat my wife to a limo ride to
wherever she wanted to go for her birthday. That's pretty cool, huh.
She came and picked us up, along with some friends
of ours and their kids and my mom. So you're thinking,
(20:36):
what kind of twenty first birthday is this? Right? Good question,
Greg says, I suppose I should also tell you that
my wife happened to be pregnant with her daughter at
the time, so there's not gonna be any drinking on
her part. Instead, we rolled up the Chuck E Cheese
if you're unfamiliar, it's a pizza place for games and
whatnot for kids, and had some pizza in a great
time with the kids. We've got a few head turns
(20:56):
and finger points and good time was had by all.
Keep up the great work listening your podcast on the
way to and from work each day on my forty
minute drive. Let's see, it made a memorable evening for them,
right Yeah? And uh, look, I know that Chucky cheese
is for kids. Um, but I'm such a huge fan
of pizza that I would I would go up there
by myself if it were allowed. Who doesn't love pizza
(21:19):
and video games? Any right? Really? How un american can
you be feeling? How unhuman can you be? I guess right?
So everybody loves pizza, video games, everybody loves limousines. That
sounds like a funny evening. That sounds like funny me, Greg,
Thanks so much for writing to us with an excellent
limo story. It sounds like, uh, it sounds like your
(21:40):
wife's mom was doing some awesome stuff. There's a limo
driver that sounds like an interesting profession. I bet she's
got some good stories. I think that makes you technically
best mom ever for that weekend. I think all limo
drivers have just fascinating stories. Yeah, it is. It's kind
of like a cab drivers too. Man and truckers always
have these amazing stories, slightly different side of life that
(22:01):
they see. Yeah, and we'd like to hear your amazing stories.
We hope you enjoyed our episode on why you cannot
and should not put your car in reverse while you're
at speed uh and we'd like to hear some of
your stories, so tell us about them, Send us a
message or a post on Facebook. Check our Twitter for
continual updates on everything interesting in the world of autos.
(22:23):
Check out our website, of course, car Stuff Show dot com,
or send us your story and topic suggestion directly. Our
email address is our stuff at Discovery dot com. For
more on this and thousands of other topics, is that
how stuff works dot com. Let us know what you think.
Send an email to podcast at how stuff works dot com.
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Scott Benjamin
Ben Bowlin
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