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Q: I have a 2007 Nissan Sentra. Today I stupidly put my car in park while going about 7 miles per hour.

asked by on September 12, 2017

I have a 2007 Nissan Sentra. Today I stupidly put my car in PARK while going about 7mph coming to a full stop. The sound that came out of the car was not horrible, it sounded exactly how it sounds to grind the gears of a manual transmission car. Either way though I freaked out because I just bought my car and I don't want my mistake to kill my car. My question is, should I worry? The car seems fine, no smells or weird noises, no engine light on. I also put my car in park on a hill afterwards to see if the pin would have been broken in the incident, however it seemed fine and did not budge. I always put up my E-brake when parked as well. I'm not sure if I should get my car checked out reguardless of anything seemingly being wrong..

My car has 64000 miles.
My car has an automatic transmission.

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Yea, that was a pretty big goof! Just don’t do it again. Everybody gets in a hurry and makes that mistake sometime and your car can probably handle it a few times, but when it’s too much, the parking pawl will break and the car won’t stay stationary in park anymore. There isn’t much point in trying to check it out because the parts that are affected are deep in the transmission so the transmission would have to be removed and disassembled to check their condition. Your best move is to not rely on the parking pawl entirely but to be sure to set the parking brake when you park the car. when you are ready to go, put the car in drive before you release the parking brake, that keeps you from stressing the parking pawl. If you have any trouble getting the car into park in the future, you can contact YourMechanic. They can send a technician to your home or office to check out our Nissan and let you know what is the solution.

Nissan
Sentra
2007
L4-2.0L
automatic transmission
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