In some of the latest cars on the market, you can change gears simply by pressing a button, turning a knob or toggling a small joystick. Yet simultaneously, plenty of different vehicles still require motorists to use one foot for the clutch pedal and another for the gas, all when using one hand to manipulate the gear-shift lever through a distinct pattern of positions. And many other current vehicles don’t possess any traditional gears at all in their transmissions.
But whether or not a vehicle has a fancy automatic, an old-school manual or a modern-day continually variable transmitting (CVT), each unit has to do the same work: help transmit the engine’s result to the driving wheels. It’s a complicated task that we’ll make an effort to make a bit simpler today, you start with the basics about why a transmitting is needed to begin with.
Let’s actually begin with the normal internal combustion engine. As the fuel-air mixture ignites in the cylinders, the pistons begin moving up and down, and that motion can be used to spin the car’s crankshaft. When the driver presses on the gas pedal, there’s more fuel to burn in the cylinders and the complete process moves quicker and faster.
What the transmission does is change the ratio between how fast the engine is spinning and how fast the driving wheels are moving. A lower gear means optimum functionality with the tires moving slower than the engine, while with an increased gear, optimum performance includes the wheels moving quicker.
With a manual transmission, gear shifting is handled by the driver via a gear selector. A lot of today’s vehicles possess five or six ahead gears, but you’ll discover older models with anywhere from three to six ahead gears offered.
A clutch is utilized to transmit torque from a car’s engine to its manual tranny. The various gears in a manual tranny allow the car to visit at different speeds. Bigger gears offer lots of torque but lower Variable Speed Drive Motor speeds, while smaller gears deliver much less torque and allow the car travel quicker.