My friend was picking me up from work and just as she was driving away she felt like throwing up so she jammed her brakes on to stop but just before she stopped the car she jammed the auto tranny into park. The tranny had a grind but it stopped. The grind was maybe a second or so and the parking lot was super icy.

How much damage could she have done by doing that? I've heard that the parking pawl acts like a ratchet and if the tranny is still moving that the parking pawl will have difficulties engaging and will simply ratchet until it stops and locks the tranny.

It seems to drive fine and it certainly parks fine.

Has anyone seen worse abuse done on an auto tranny without issues?

Thanks

 

dude. hear MY story. i was bringing somebody to the ER and when i got into the lot, before i even braked all the way/stopped, i pushed the car into P and pulled the ebrake.

three months later, my tranny is still running strong... so i would say you didn't do much damage.

i probably was still going like 5-8 mph...

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by stevescivic &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">My friend was picking me up from work and just as she was driving away she felt like throwing up so she jammed her brakes on to stop but just before she stopped the car she jammed the auto tranny into park. The tranny had a grind but it stopped. The grind was maybe a second or so and the parking lot was super icy.

How much damage could she have done by doing that? I've heard that the parking pawl acts like a ratchet and if the tranny is still moving that the parking pawl will have difficulties engaging and will simply ratchet until it stops and locks the tranny.

It seems to drive fine and it certainly parks fine.

Has anyone seen worse abuse done on an auto tranny without issues?

Thanks

</TD></TR></TABLE>

You are correct about the parking mechanism. While rolling and trying to engage Park, the parking pawl simply bounces off the parking gear until the speed is sufficiently slow enough to engage the parking gear without causing damage. The pawl and gear notches are both rounded to prevent such a problem from happening.

Trust me, as a transmission analyst at the factory - I've seen every possible problem that exists. The only time you'll have a parking problem is if the transmission was built wrong.

Your tranny will be just fine.