Said It Here

What to do when your car is wedged against a garage wall

Trying to wiggle out of a tight spot often turns a minor scrape into a car jammed directly against a wall. Once it gets wedged, shifting into reverse or drive stops working entirely and leaves drivers unsure whether moving forward or backward will cause worse damage.

What people tried

Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.

  1. 1
    Reversing the steering steps used to get into the position
  2. 2
    Folding mirrors in
  3. 3
    Using a floor jack and car dollies to manually shift the vehicle
  4. 4
    Having a spotter guide the driver out
  5. 5
    Using a floor jack to lift the corner of the car and placing a spare wheel or wooden plank underneath
  6. 6
    Putting a plank of wood against the curb and backing up slowly
  7. 7
    Revving the engine to get enough momentum to reverse
  8. 8
    waiting for it to randomly go into gear
  9. 9
    checking or replacing the brake pedal switch

In their words

Unedited, most upvoted first, each linked to the thread it came from.

Yeah true but I kept turning and I somehow ended up worse then how it was hahasource ↗

enigmatical_one · r/AskMechanics · 214 upvotes

Yeah basically I just kept doing the wiggle movement and next thing I know bam im right next to the wallsource ↗

enigmatical_one · r/AskMechanics · 113 upvotes

At a complete loss.source ↗

ExemptWalrus · r/MechanicAdvice · 2 upvotes

What’s the best next move to do I tried reversing and it’s not movingsource ↗

Should I drive forward or will that do worse damage to my carsource ↗

Technical-Bird5550 · r/MechanicAdvice · 1 upvotes

This happened today randomly at a gas station, was stranded for about a half an hour until I got it to randomly go in gear.source ↗

ExemptWalrus · r/MechanicAdvice · 1 upvotes

I just bought the truck two weeks ago so who knows. Sigh.source ↗

ExemptWalrus · r/MechanicAdvice · 1 upvotes

Where this came up

People with this problem also raised