What happens if a car with automatic transmission stalls while driving

Any car can stall on the move, regardless of the type of gearbox. But if with the “mechanics” everything is more or less clear, then with the “two-pedal” machines, not everything is smooth and obvious. The AvtoVzglyad portal tells what a similar problem can turn into.

The very fact that the car's engine suddenly stopped working on the move causes bewilderment and even fear. More than once the author of these lines experienced the same. There is nothing pleasant about this, but it is more important to understand what consequences such a breakdown will have.

If the gearbox is mechanical, then the inertia of a moving car through a closed clutch will turn the crankshaft until the vehicle comes to a complete stop. At the same time, the processes of combustion of the air-fuel mixture will not occur in the stalled engine, which means that there will be no serious consequences for either the engine or the gearbox.

Well, the engine can stall, say, due to the fact that the EGR valve (exhaust gas recirculation) is clogged or there are problems with fuel supply due to dirt that has accumulated on the fuel pump grid.

And what about "automatic"? Once, while driving a car with a hydromechanical transmission, your correspondent's timing belt was cut off. The engine jerked a couple of times, stalled and I rolled to the side of the road without touching the automatic transmission selector. The drive wheels did not lock up, so do not believe the tales from the Web. The car will not fly into a ditch by itself, will not lose control, and the wheels will continue to rotate. The fact is that a stalled motor does not rotate the input shaft of the gearbox. There is also no pressure that the oil pump creates. And without pressure, the “box” automatics will turn on the “neutral”. This mode is activated, say, at a service or when towing a car on a flexible hitch.

Therefore, the main harm, when the engine stalls, is able to cause the car to the driver himself. If a person starts to fuss, he may accidentally transfer the selector from “drive” to “parking”. And that's when you hear a metallic crunch. It's the parking lock that's starting to grind against the teeth of the wheel on the output shaft. This is fraught with wear of transmission parts and the formation of metal chips that will fall into the "box" oil. In the worst case, the latch may jam. Then the car is guaranteed to go to the service for an expensive transmission repair. Moreover, he will do it on a tow truck.