I was wondering today with the winter weather coming what happens when you wheelspin an auto? I haven't had an auto before, but if it slips wont it think it needs to change gear, and then when you get grip you will stall?

Am I being paranoid?

it will shift into the most selective gear, i doubt very much it would stall because you would need to have your foot down hard on the floor to spin the wheels

The Omega just wheelspins for a bit then changes up to second and wheelspins a bit more. It probably does the same in the other gears but I like my diff too much to try it. No chance of it stalling if it is torque converter type auto as the converter allows the engine to run in any gear with the car at a standstill.

Chris

Many modern autos have a winter mode - check your manual and you might be in luck.

I remember many years ago in my mis spent youth I had a 3l v6 capri with an auto box, it also had a few basic engine mods and 8" wide wheels, a wonderfully fun car to drive, with the auto box it was relatively fuel efficient as you drove everywhere on tick over .

However I also worked out that I could wheel spin stunningly well by reving to 6000 rpm in neutral then dumping the manual box into the "1" setting, I did this particularly violently at the bottom of a hill one night with 3 lads in the back of the car and instead of a glorious bout of wheel spin and tail fishing I got a clonk a crunch and a roll back down the hill - the propshaft had given out and twisted to look like a marshmallow twist! which had shortened it to the point where the splines had become disengaged. The prop shaft had been in perfect condition before that :(.

Those 3l engines were awefully torquey and the 8" wide wheels had a nice surface area and with 3 guys in the back a lot of weight holding them down. Something was going to give some where, the auto box took the strain, the back wheels were stationary and had a lot of weight on them so they held in place a second too long and the prop shaft took the brunt of the force.

So what happens when the wheels spin - no big problem - its when they DONT spin that you might have a problem

And yes it was an idiotic thing to do, I was young

I can't help, but just wanted to thank you for reminding me that there's a Winter Motoring sticky on this forum, which I must re-read...

Thank you

Mo

and then when you get grip you will stall?

It's hard to stall an auto. Only way I've seen it done is to stamp on the brake and throttle together.

A friend of mine had a 2.8l mk2 granada auto, that took a hammering and only used to get wheelspin when he was drifing it!!! This was all good until the day he drifted off a roundabout and had a close encounter with a lampost, the car bent in two, and the lampost had a little blue mark.