Motorists who leave their cars parked on the street this winter are getting ample time to hone their exhumation techniques. However, the subsequent forward-reverse ballet used to get a vehicle onto open pavement is often treated indelicately, damaging vehicle and wallet.  This winter some repair shops are reporting one of their busiest periods in memory, largely on the dollars of drivers who, overeager to leave parking spaces that are hemmed in by ice and snow, apply too much gas and spin their wheels in forward and reverse gears. This can overload the transmission and damage pumps, bushings and housings.  “We’re busiest as we’ve ever been,” said Ray Delarea, owner of Dolphin Transmissions in Brooklyn, in a telephone interview. “You can’t go forcing things with this Reverse-then-Drive, Reverse-then-Drive dance.”  When a wheel is struggling to find traction on an icy surface, its speed greatly exceeds that of the vehicle. This imbalance, especially for a car with virtually no road speed — like one trying to leave an icy parking space — at minimum creates friction at crucial points within the transmission, and can even cause a bushing to break away entirely and become a high-speed projectile within the engine bay.  “If the bushing has fused or worn away, the oil pump is going to leak,” Mr. Delarea said. “About 75 percent of the winter repairs we’re doing are because of bushing-related oil leaks, and the other 25 percent are on fully broken planetary gears because people are overloading their transmissions.”  Alan Doherty, owner of Everett Transmission in Everett, Mass., said in a telephone interview that this winter’s storms have created a rhythm to his shop’s work. “With the snow flying, we’d mostly see plow trucks coming in with their transmissions burnt out,” he said. “But give it a few days, let it melt and then freeze up, and it’ll be people who were trying to get going with one tire spinning like mad, trying to beat the band, and they broke the differential.”  On slick surfaces, slow, judicious pressure on the accelerator is recommended because it heightens the tires’ chances of grabbing onto what little tacky material might be below the treads. But modulating pedal pressure can be difficult with automatic transmissions, which generally do not offer the kind of tactile feedback provided to drivers with manual transmissions. As motorists’ nerves fray, the desire to deliver more, not less, throttle is heightened.  Solutions for wheel-slippage — aside from garages, snow tires and moving to Palm Springs — are frustratingly simple, yet they make poor palliatives for a rushed driver. “People just don’t want to get out of their cars and clear whatever’s stopping them,” Mr. Delarea said.  Mr. Everett concurred, but was more specific, offering a classic New England remedy. “The shovel,” he said.
A car’s transmission, differentials and various bushings are at risk when motorists excessively spin their wheels when trying to leave a slick parking space.