r/Cartalk • u/LikAStixLikTatStix • 1d ago
Transmission Accidentally shifted into park while driving, consequences in the future?
So I'm an idiot and I was driving my car on like 5-6 hours of sleep; driving to a meet-up, I was going to park on the side of the house, but I forgot to fully stop and my hand just subconsciously shifted the gear to park while my car was still moving (going at about 4-5 mph), and it made a horrible grinding sound (huge mistake, I know, never happening again)
Immediately, I shifted it back to drive and braked, then when it fully stopped I shifted it back to park and turned on the emergency lights, completely shaken up by what just happened.
After a bit, I put it back into drive and I parked; the car was fine. I drove it home after the meet-up, and there were no noises or immediate problems; gears shifted like normal, brakes worked, park worked.
My concern is: Did I do any major transmission damage that might cause it to break down in the future?
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u/earthman34 1d ago
There's a thing called a parking pawl inside the transmission, it's a little lever that engages a cog to lock the transmission from turning. Obviously, if thought wasn't put into how this was designed, it would be easy to create a mechanism that would allow people to seriously damage their transmission, so, these are typically designed with a rounded end and a spring release so if you do what you did, the rotational inertia will knock the pawl back so it "ratchets" until the car stops or you move the lever back. This usually makes a horrible noise, and I have seen cases where it has broken something, but typically there's no damage. If everything works, you're probably fine.
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u/SummertimeThrowaway2 1d ago
If it still works normally then it’s fine. Maybe use the parking brake every time you park for a while incase the parking prawl is damaged and fails though. But I seriously doubt that will happen
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u/ClickKlockTickTock 1d ago
If it still goes into park then you've suffered no consequences. Use your parking brake when parking though, it shouldn't of weakened the pawl if it didn't totally snap off, but incase it did, you'd rather it snap and the parking brake stop your car, than it snap in the future and your car roll into another car or off the road somewhere.
The noise is essentially an L shaped piece (parking pawl) trying to go into a gear groove to stop the gear (connected to your wheels). Instead of going between the grooves, its hitting the tips of the gear, which is rounded, bouncing up and trying to get into another groove of the gear, over and over. If you're lucky, it just deflected over and over. If you got super unlucky and it actually slotted in and broke or did it enough times to grind the tip down, or slotted in without fully snapping but fatigued the metal, you may experience issues.
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u/mb-driver 22h ago
That was the parking pawl trying to engage in a gear as someone else mentioned. It makes a horrible noise when that happens but usually doesn’t do any damage except bruising your ego and making that horrific sound. I did it once a longggg time ago in my brother’s old Camaro.
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u/Typical-Machine154 1d ago
If it still stays stopped in park then the parking pawl is still attached. What you heard was the parking pawl trying to fall into a notch. The car never slowed down enough for it to catch a notch and shear itself out hopefully.
Put it in park on a small incline, if you have an electronic parking brake make sure it's disengaged, and take your foot off the brake. If the car stays you're good. If it doesn't that's bad.