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.
- 1Reversing the steering steps used to get into the position
- 2Folding mirrors in
- 3Using a floor jack and car dollies to manually shift the vehicle
- 4Having a spotter guide the driver out
- 5Using a floor jack to lift the corner of the car and placing a spare wheel or wooden plank underneath
- 6Putting a plank of wood against the curb and backing up slowly
- 7Revving the engine to get enough momentum to reverse
- 8waiting for it to randomly go into gear
- 9checking 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 haha”source ↗
“Yeah basically I just kept doing the wiggle movement and next thing I know bam im right next to the wall”source ↗
“At a complete loss.”source ↗
“What’s the best next move to do I tried reversing and it’s not moving”source ↗
“Should I drive forward or will that do worse damage to my car”source ↗
“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 ↗
“I just bought the truck two weeks ago so who knows. Sigh.”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
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