Can you drive a car without a Clutch?

If you drive a car with a manual transmission, your car has a clutch. The clutch is a component used to connect and disconnect the transmission from the engine so you can change gears. It works quite easily by pressing the clutch pedal on the driver’s side floor area, left of the brake pedal.

Rarely, it occurs that your clutch fails while you are driving. Whether the clutch pedal breaks or the clutch disc fails, you could find that pressing the clutch pedal does not engage the clutch. If this happens, you can’t shift your transmission in the traditional way.

You can, however, continue to drive your vehicle until you need to come to a stop. Driving a manual transmission vehicle without using the clutch is tricky and can cause damage to your transmission. It should only be used in an emergency and for a brief time.

When you’re driving a manual transmission car and your clutch fails, you can still accelerate and upshift. Upshifting without a clutch isn’t a smooth action and is going to be harsh as your clutch can’t be used to ease the transition between gears. Accelerate your vehicle to the point of the next gear change. The speed varies from vehicle to vehicle. Upshifting at 3,000-3,500 RPMs is a good range.

Simultaneously let off the gas and pull the shifter out of gear. While you let off the gas, the transmission doesn’t have pressure on it. The gear shifter should pull out with slight effort. If you wait too long to pull the shifter out of gear, you may have to rev the engine back up and try again.

Press the shifter against the next highest gear in sequence. If you’re in third gear, press the shifter against the fourth gear location.

Apply moderate constant pressure against the shifter as the engine RPMs drop. Once the RPMs match the transmission speed, the shifter will slip into gear. Pressing too firmly will cause the gears to grind and pressing too lightly can cause you to miss the gear.

Accelerate up to the next shift point. Immediately once the shifter slides into place, press the accelerator to speed up. You can continue through your whole range of gears this way.