"Brian Reay" wrote in message
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Why use the handbrake at all, if the footbrake is still working fine?

Although you say below the car has no brake servo, I was thinking to
compensate for the loss of the brake servo vacuum with the ign off.

I think very car I've drive with servo brakes, the footbrake has worked far
better even with no servo than that handbrake as a means of slowing the car
down, as opposed to holding it when it's already stationary.


I don't know how fast an engine might turn if all the mechanical load is
removed at full throttle, and how much extra load this would place on the
con rods. Modern cars with fuel injection and and ECU would almost
certainly have a rev limiter. But the car I was driving was much older
than that, with a carburettor, so there would be no limit to the engine
speed, other than normal engine friction and the maximum fuel flow that
the carb could manage.

If the car is in neutral it won't lock the wheels.

I was thinking more of simply pressing the clutch - easier to do without
taking hands off the wheel while trying to steer round objects ahead, rather
than trying to find neutral in the heat of the moment.

If you just turned off the engine on a manual, in neutral, then turn ign
on, you could steer without power steering and have basic brakes.

As it happens, the car no PAS and no servo brakes, so neither would have
suffered.

There can't be many of those around.

No. This was 40 years ago on my mum's Renault 6.