My son is 15 and will have his permit in a couple of months and for some reason he's been asking a lot of questions about how a clutch works and how a manuel transmission works.
So, this weekend he asked me can I start in second gear or third gear and I explained yes but it adds strain to the clutch assembly, engine and transmission and why. He then asked me a question I never considered before. Can you start in fifth gear? Hmmmmm, I never thought about it and certainly never tried it in all of my years of driving so I pulled over.
Now, I'm not a complete idiot so I knew to NOT rev the engine too high and my KA has enough torque to get the job done so I continued with my experiment.
The KA performed exactly like she should have, the car did excel to 25 mph with the clutch fully engaged. The rpm was very low as expected and I got to share with my son a safe yet stupid experiment.
I did this a couple blocks from my home so I didn't think about it but went straight home and put datster in the garage. This is when we both noticed the nastiest smell ever. There is no denying my experiment wasn't over and I had to explain the possible damage I just caused. Describing to him what may have happened to the clutch was hard for me to say and hard for me to hear myself say. I didn't sleep well that night.
I got out of bed about 4:30 because I had to see if I burned up my clutch and if it was slipping. (Now for the fun part) once the engine temp was normal and everything worked well shifting wise in my neighborhood I decided to find a lonely road for a burnout. Well, the clutch is fine and there are some beautiful burnout marks that I get to see everyday going to work.
Experiment concluded.
