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You win the Dumb Move of the Month award.
I see you have only had the Vette a month. You have to Learn how to drive.
Aside from hurting yourself and your girlfriend. You could have seriously hurt some innocent people in another car when you went sliding across 2 lanes at 75 mph.
Oh BTW. You might have some flat spots on those rear tires
yeah i know im still an amateur at driving the vette however im no amateur at driving. it sounds way worse than it actually was i knew what was happening and didn't panic so that helped. i wanna hit myself even more because ive down shifted with the same intention fine before so who knows. brainfart
Originally Posted by Patches
Actually, at 6200 rpm, speed on a 3.42-geared C5 is about 54 mph so 75 mph put you at ~8611 rpm. Hopefully you pulled you foot off the accelerator quickly and the sideward motio scrubbed the speed off to where no damage was done.
Thank goodness no one was hurt - be careful out there.
yeah the speed dropped pretty quick and as soon as i let the clutch out i knew something was wrong so i did not hit the accelerator AT ALL. Not only that i don't know where 75mph came from, i was doing 70 max prob not even 65 im just being over paranoid. the car slowed down pretty quick~20-30mph and luckily i checked to make sure the road was clear in front and behind me before i did this. during all of this however i did not have time to look at the tach so i dont know how it went exactly. thanks for the info guys and i really hope i didnt hurt the car too bad. im going to take it for a ride today on the highway and listen closely and post back.
When I was in High School I had a 98 Mustang GT 5 speed and a buddy of mine was always bugging me to let him drive it. I finally did - I jumped in the passenger seat and watched him try to shift from 2nd to 3rd during a hard pull, only to see him accidentally drop it into 1st. We were only doing about 45 mph at the time and my car was never the same after that.
I accidentally made out with his x-girlfriend a few weeks later!
I have done dumb stuff, but this one tops all of mine so far. You might want to check your car just to make sure it won't brake or lock up in the near future.
I think if you had done serious mechanical damage you would have known it by now. As stated I'd pay attention for a while for something subtle that could develop !! Relax to a point,,these things are pretty tough!! I'd put a small wager that you got lucky this time!!
I remember reading a thread similar to your situation and it ended up doing some pretty serious damage. I don't have the thread or info though. I hope no damage was done to yours.
Rev limiter will only cut fuel,......................the rear wheels, contacted with the road are driving the motor to what ever RPMs are appropriate for the gearing.....................this is a forced mechanical issue not an electronic one.........................These motors are good....... but if it went beyond max specs for overrev have been breached you have caused some damage or at minimum excessive wear...switch to synthetic and hope for the best.
Best thing to do is relax and chill. Most of us, me included, have at one time or another had our vettes get the best of us. That's how we learn.
With that said, the vette makes us all amateurs initially as driving this car is like no other, period. I don't care what you have driven or how fast. It takes time to learn to drive your vette. Take the car out to the drag strip, go to a road course and really get on the vette and learn from it. This will make you a better vette driver regardless of where you are at.
Respect the car and the power, if not it will bite you hard.
Glad you/GF and car were not hurt. Lesson learned.
PS: The rev limiter does nothing on downshifts, thats why we use the heel to toe, to match the RPMs.
The OP said the rear tires locked up... last time I checked, the transmission wasn't supposed to be an e-brake. Anyway, its not going to do any good to worry about it. Just take it to a reputable service shop and tell ask them to look it over.
DO NOT tell them what you did until after they look it over, just in case they aren't as reputable as you thought they were and try to take advantage of the situation.
Thankfully, I've never had any problem of this sort, but that would be my advice.
NOTE: Always remember that when shifting down into third, you only need to push the shifter STRAIGHT forward -- there is no need to ever compensate by pushing it laterally when shifting from 5th or 6th to 3rd or 4th as the centering action of the shifter will do that for you... Further, as you've now learned, always be extra careful when shifting out of overdrive at high speed... the ratios multiply the rotational speed of the engine rather than divide it, so even downshifting into third could cause you problems if you're going too fast and dump the clutch.
Consider yourself lucky. I did the same thing but i was in 3rd trying to shift to 4th and i hit 2nd. I hit thr rev limiter pretty hard after the car was backfiring and missing i barely made it home. The car would not stay running by itself. Had a friend come check it out and after some discussion i pulled the heads to find 3 bent valves ouch!
Hopefully you have not done any damage,but with my car i noticed it right away.