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Can you shift to neutral while full acceleration in a manual transmission, without using the clutch?

Motor Vehicle Maintenance & Repair Asked by sturza on August 30, 2020

It’s a pure theoretical question and these are the conditions:

  • car is at the highest torque while accelerating (5000rpm gasoline or 3500rpm diesel)
  • car is in 2nd gear (still has force to accelerate the car, fast)
  • no clutch to be used

Does the manual transmission permit to pull the lever out of gear in these conditions?
If yes, why?

One Answer

Full acceleration means that the transmission is operating with sufficient force to prevent the disengagement of the gears. It's more likely that such an attempt will break something which was not designed to accept the force necessary to make this gear change.

If you consider the forces applied to the gear teeth of the transmission under acceleration, there is friction (despite lubrication) preventing the sideways motion necessary to disengage those teeth. The detents of the system provide similar but much smaller levels of force.

I have shifted manual transmissions multiple times by relaxing the throttle, selecting neutral and re-engaging when the engine speed matched the desired gear selection.

One can apply pressure to the shift lever and it will not disengage until or unless the load is released.

Due to the internal forces of a transmission, it's not impossible to consider that one could begin to move the shift lever sufficiently to reduce the contact between gears, at which point the gears would fail mechanically, followed by a good portion of the remaining transmission.

Correct answer by fred_dot_u on August 30, 2020

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