Can Friday get any worse ?

[Sunny43.5]

Well F*&&^%ty F&^%ty came home after working this morning and parked out on the street as wife was going out to doctors appointment "yes we live on the side of a pretty major hill" so van is parked where I have parked thousands of times before . Well half an hour later with no warning the van decides it does not want to live here any more , and away it goes all on its lonesome . I heard five low thuds and thought what was that so went out to see what happened , well the trusty steed has gone down the hill backwards IN GEAR With Handbrake on !! took out five small trees on the footpath and side swiped a parked car before coming to a stop against a power pole . Neighbour said they saw it rolling very slowly as he thought I was reversing down the fact that it was on the footpath was a dead give away that I was not behind the wheel . So now off to the panel shop for some massage work me thinks .
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[team_v]

Wow, that is crazy!
In gear and handbrake applied and it still went down.
This is teh cable handbrake, not the e-brake as per the Mk7 golf/tiguan etc yeah?

[Sunny43.5]

Yes handbrake cable job and I have parked there thousands of times before with no problem , I can only assume that the fact it was in gear was that it was at the top of the compression stroke and it just snuck away in gear backwards bizzare methinks . Oh and I am not the first one in our street to have a runaway its a pretty radical hill so it can catch the best of us , at least three other cars have ended up at the bottom of the hill the pole stopped mine thank goodness .

[gldgti]

Unlucky

On really steep hills I often park so that movement will force a wheel at the gutter, but by the sounds of it that wouldnt have stopped your van anyway.

I almost lost our cabby down our driveway the other day - I had been working on it, started it with hte bonnet open after taking it our of gear, went round and inspected the engine while running, started to shut the bonnet and the car started to move backwards! Gave me a right scare but I managed to hang onto the radiator support panel and stop the rolling motion before it got any momentum up. Phew!

[Transporter]

Yeah, the bad things happen even to good people.
It's all well, when no one got injured, mate.

[brad]

As an extra precaution you could take a note from San Francisco & turn the steering wheel on full lock when parking. Then if it rolls the wheels either get stopped by the kerb or the car does a lazy sideways turn

IIRC, it's a bookable offence in SFO not to turn the wheels away from the kerb on a hill.

[Sunny43.5]

Yes I have been there very scary hills I will admit we live on the highest residential land in Logan City so the hill is quite steep . So steep that many years ago when I owned a CFS Bedford rear wheel drive van I backed out of the drive and engaged drive and snapped the axle clean off at the spline . I am going to try an experiment with the van to see if I can see why it waited so long to take off [with me inside this time ].

[wai]

What gear did you leave it in? It should be close to impossible for the car to roll away in gear as long as it is in 1st.

By the way, My brother never believed in leaving his ute with the transmission in 1st gear, and one day, as the brakes cooled, the ute rolled down and into a power pole. He found out about it when the police knocked on his door to tell him what had happened, and handed him a fine for failing to secure the vehicle when parked.

Seeing as the Auto/DSG models require you to have the transmission in Park before you can remove the ignition key, do the manual versions have something similar where the ignition key can only be removed with the transmission in a particular gear?

[brad]

Yes I have been there very scary hills I will admit we live on the highest residential land in Logan City so the hill is quite steep . So steep that many years ago when I owned a CFS Bedford rear wheel drive van I backed out of the drive and engaged drive and snapped the axle clean off at the spline . I am going to try an experiment with the van to see if I can see why it waited so long to take off [with me inside this time ].

Probably the back brakes cooled down so the clamping pressure wasn't as high. If I pull my handbrake on normally (eg: I'm not trying to anchor the car on the side of a cliff) and park in my driveway (about a 1 in 8 drop so not overly steep) in neutral when I get home it takes about 10-15 minutes for the brakes to cool & then the car will roll down the drive.

[Sunny43.5]

Ah now that make sense add to that the lo compression of 250000kays and it makes for a probable cause , it was in 2nd as that's the only gear I CAN CLIMB THE HILL in . and yes the key can be removed regardless of what gear its in .