Old automatic transmissions
Ale
Posts: 2,363
I was looking to the pictures in volocars.com and the automatics have: P, R, N, D, 2 and 1. How do you drive that ? Do you have to start in 1, then 2 and then D ? just curious.
Comments
The Tiptronic (Pretend auto gear sticks) system usually goes further and allows easy holding/selecting any gear because it uses an electrically driven gear selector. Tiptronic still has the Drive position.
For a bit of trivia; Sequential is the name for electrically driven gear selector when it's a manual gear box. Sequential's also exhibit a Drive position now too. As do CVT's.
I know newer automatics, they have only D, but you can also manually change gears. Where I work, we develop 8 and 9 gears automatic transmissions, they do not have fixed positions afaik, but I only see a tiny bit from the whole
Or when you going downhill towing a trailer and your brakes are failing.
Ah, I do wonder if maybe you are dealing with a sequential rather than an tiptronic(automatic) ....? I say this because, with that many gears, it sounds like you might be talking about transport trucks or buses or similar, ie: much heavier vehicles than what the consumer buys.
PS: It's important to make the distinction between automatic and tiptronic here, because sequential is the manual transmission's equivalent name.
What I meant with "fixed positions" was regarding the gear lever, that it only has D for forward (besides sport and so on).
Unless you get into older transmissions like a 1965 C4 transmission. It has a low gear for only low but for drive it uses dots. The first position up from L is really normal drive instead of the one above it. Definitely not what I was use to.
Robert
Chevy's Powerglide tranny only had 2 speeds, low & drive.
Fun facts:
The Powerglide used a P-N-D-L-R selector sequence through 1957, changed in 1958 to the now-standard P-R-N-D-L sequence.
The special Corvair version (rear engine) had no PARK position and a dash-mounted shift lever:
Some high-end cars had push-button "Select-O-Matic" tranny controls:
Yep. It has L for 1st only, Normal Drive is where second should be and the Dot where drive is actually starts out in 2nd gear. Took me a while to get used to it. There is a note about it here:
"It is commonly referred to as the "green dot" C4 (used up to 66). What would be the normal drive position is actually a 2nd gear take off mode (for snow,etc.), and what would normally be the 2nd gear position is actually normal automatic drive mode (1,2,3). 1st gear position remains the same, first gear only,"
When I hear "green dots" circa 1966, I see this:
Handbrake style levers controlled overdrive, hood release, and gearshift on various old cars. Thankfully for safety, transmission shifters & shift patterns became fairly standardized in the 1960s. Not sure if it was government intervention or not, but overall a good thing.
The tragic recent death of Anton Yelchin (Chekov in Star Trek reboot) may be due to a faulty shifter design: http://www.people.com/article/anton-yelchin-dead-jeep-recall-gear-defect
Right, so that's the difference between a fully mechanical gear lever, where there is more complexity at the interface to the operator, verses Tiptronic, where the electrical shifter can hide it all inside the gearbox.
The physical gear lever for Tiptronic is just a gimmick.