If you drive a stick-shift car, then you may have several questions floating in your head.
How does the funny"H" patternthat I am moving this shift knob through have any relation to the gears inside the transmission? What is moving inside the transmission when I move the shifter?
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When I mess up and hear that horriblegrindingsound, what is actually grinding? What would happen if I were to accidentally shift intoreversewhile I am speeding down the freeway? Would the entire transmission explode?
In this article, we'll answer all of these questions and more as we explore the interior of a manual transmission.
Cars need transmissions because of the physics of thegasoline engine。首先,任何引擎redline— a maximum rpm value above which the engine cannot go without exploding. Second, if you have readHow Horsepower Works, then you know that engines have narrow rpm ranges where horsepower andtorqueare at their maximum. For example, an engine might produce its maximum horsepower at 5,500 rpm. The transmission allows thegear ratiobetween the engine and the drive wheels to change as the car speeds up and slows down. You shift gears so the engine can stay below the redline and near the rpm band of its best performance.
Ideally, the transmission would be so flexible in its ratios that the engine could always run at its single, best-performance rpm value. That is the idea behind thecontinuously variable transmission(CVT). We'll talk about that next.
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