"Rod Speed" wrote in message
...
It isnt just one of those, no reason why you cant do
both but don’t turn the ignition off. And it isnt just the
handbrake either, the normal brakes should be used too.

I wouldn't touch the handbrake. Why should a weak brake that has bugger-all
effect on slowing down a car that is moving (in my experience) be any better
than the much more powerful footbrake which acts on all four wheels? If the
footbrake fails to make any impression on the speed (eg because the friction
of trying to slow down when working against the engine has worn away the
pads) then the handbrake isn't goign to have any more success since it
normally controls the self-same pads - except only those on the rear wheels.

And if the handbrake *does* stop just the rear wheels, on a front-wheel
drive car where the front wheels are the only ones being driven, then you
will risk locking the rear wheels long before the front wheels stop turning,
which is not conducive to driving in a straight line :-)


I'd turn the ignition off, put the car into neutral
if its an automatic or press the clutch if a manual
and use the normal brakes to stop the car while
turning towards the curb to get the car out of
the way of any following cars.

Turning off the engine would lock the steering.

No it doesn’t. You have to remove the key to lock the
steering on mine. And even if it did lock the steering,
that may still be a useful thing to do if you are going
to hit something if you don’t stop quickly.

Pulling on the handbrake would lock the rear wheels.

Not necessarily, depending on how effective they are.

Depending on how hard you tug on the handle, I'd say its effect would be
either minimal or risk locking the un-driven wheels rather than the driven
ones (assuming FWD).

I think the US use of the term "emergency brake" is very misleading. I
wouldn't use it in an emergency except as a last resort after I've tried
footbrake.


But in those days the steering didn’t normally lock
when you removed the key from the ignition.

I was going up a steep hill so I was in a low gear with the engine going
quickly. When I got to the top and changed from second to third, the
engine raced but I put it down to bad clutch/accelerator coordination.
When it happened again as I changed to fourth, I realised it wasn't -
especially as the car shot forward like a scalded cat.

I realised what had happened very quickly and also knew what would happen
if I pressed the clutch or put the car into neutral, which was my first
instinct: the engine would race very quickly and if it went well over the
redline speed, it could well throw a piston which would be very bad news
if all that fast-moving metal came to rest in an instant.

So somehow I managed very calmly to turn the ignition just far enough to
kill the engine by putting it into the accessory position without turning
all the way off. Had I been travelling "at 120 mph with the engine
redlining" (as it said int he video) it might have been a *little* more
difficult to turn it just the right amount. ;-)

Don’t see why.

It may be difficult to turn the key in a controlled manner rather than as
hard as possible, if you are panicking because you are at risk of hitting
the car ahead or are approaching a tight bend.


Am I right that the last thing you want to do is let the engine greatly
exceed its redline speed and risk it seizing up

Depends on the situation. If you are likely to run into something
if you don’t stop quickly, the engine seizing is less important.

(I'm assuming that the car is old enough not to have a rev-limiter)?

Do any steering locks actually lock the steering while the key is still
in, even in the off position?

My Hyundai doesn’t.

But the steering gets much heavier because with the
engine off, the power steering isnt working anymore.

I found this out when the "fan belt" (which drives alternator, aircon and
power steering on my car) broke as I was driving at 70 mph in Lane 3 of the
motorway. I head a flap-flap-flap-splat noise, the ignition light came on
and the steering became heavy. I knew immediately what that was :-( The car
carried on fine, running on the battery, but I did have to tug the wheel to
make the car move over to the left. As it happens, I was only about a mile
short of the exit where I was planning to come off anyway, and I knew of a
garage on the side road just after I'd turned off, so I made for that. It
took a fair amount of effort to persuade the car to go round the roundabout,
presumably because the power steering ram was trying to compress the fluid
as I turned the wheel and hence the steering rack.

But I made it safely to the garage and the RAC man didn't take *too* long to
get my car home. I knew I'd be able to drive it to my local garage just
round the corner from home. As it happened, the journey home wasn't
incident-free. The RAC van towed my car front-wheels-raised, on a little
trolley that runs on its own wheels. When we were nearly there, the van
lurched sideways and RAC man swore. One of the little wheels that the
trolley ran on had burst :-( Fortunately he carried a spare for that wheel
as well as the running wheels of the van, but he had to take my car off the
trolley to be able to jack it up. That little exercise added another
quarter-of-an-hour to the journey.