JT> You'll do similar damage if you do about 40Ks, and force it into reverse.
JT> It's a bit safer as well. You'll probably have to push hard though.  The
JT> grinding noise might alarm you too.  Those little bits of metal left over
JT> on the road behind you probably won't do too much good either.

PE> Do you get a grinding noise before you've even taken the clutch off? 

Yep.

PE> I thought the whole idea of the clutch was
PE> to disconnect the engine from the gearbox?

Yep. But when you change gears, you mesh a new pair of gears.
There is a device called a synchomesh which synchronises the
meshing of that new pair of gears. Like wow man |-)

Normally when you change gears, the synchros can mesh the new pair.
But if you are trying to engage a gear thats mad for the road speed,
the tail shaft and hence one of the gears is going at a hell of a
rate, and the synchros cant get the other one up to that speed with
say first, so you usually cant even put it into first at say 100K.
You just find you cant push the lever into first, it wont go, coz
the synchros wont let it go thru to the first gear position, coz
they cant synchronise those two gears.

If you do force the gearstick hard enough, you can force it thru the
synchros, and since the gears arent at the same speed, you will get
them crunching coz they aint gunna mesh with them at different speeds.
@EOT:

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