Manual or Auto ?

[John Bull]

I am not an automobile enthusiast, treating the monster as purely a set of wheels to get me from A to B. I do know the beast very well in a mechanical and electrical way through my engineering experience.

BUT - I have often wondered why people choose an automatic transmission as against a manual one. I have never driven an automatic, I guess it is a personal thing where I prefer to do my own gear selection in accordance with speed as against letting some robot do it.

Cat amongst the pigeons ? Auto`s are OK for women who do not understand in the slightest why the car is moving let alone have any knowledge about gear change relative to speed

What do you all think and why ? Manual or automatic ?

John Bull

 

[Remeniz]

I don't think there's anything wrong with the modern day auto box' as long as I can manually over-ride it, which most allow you to do. I drive both. And even though I like a decent manual motor there's something eerily satisfying about getting into a big engine RWD saloon, starting it up, foot on break selecting 'D', releasing the hand brake and flooring the loud pedal.

Engine size is more important to me than which gearbox it has.

 

[Cabbs]

I can't stand driving automatics, but manual gearboxes in downtown traffic sucks.

 

[J03]

Manual! But i've never driven an automatic.

 

[mark thorpe]

manual.

 

[lewblue83]

i love manual, just makes the whole driving experience more fun. currently im driving an automatic though. old cadillacs never came with manual transmission lmao. maybe its time to trade up for a CTS-V 6speed!!!!!! woooooot

 

[David Lindon]

I am not an automobile enthusiast, treating the monster as purely a set of wheels to get me from A to B. I do know the beast very well in a mechanical and electrical way through my engineering experience.

BUT - I have often wondered why people choose an automatic transmission as against a manual one. I have never driven an automatic, I guess it is a personal thing where I prefer to do my own gear selection in accordance with speed as against letting some robot do it.

Cat amongst the pigeons ? Auto`s are OK for women who do not understand in the slightest why the car is moving let alone have any knowledge about gear change relative to speed

What do you all think and why ? Manual or automatic ?

John Bull

Speed is absolutely irelevant to gear changes, the only thing that governs when you change gear is the engine load and RPM. eg. if you floor it you aren't gonna shift up till you red line it.

Autos are smoother, one thing that irritates me is when you are in traffic going very slow and the driver is sat in 1st gear and keeps lifting off the gas and you keep getting the engine braking affect. Very annoying.

 

[eslfish]

Manual...we have a thread just like this...

 

[John Bull]

Speed is absolutely irelevant to gear changes, the only thing that governs when you change gear is the engine load and RPM. eg. if you floor it you aren't gonna shift up till you red line it.

Correction - On the contrary, SPEED is TOTALLY relevant to GEAR change.
The object of having an engine and gearbox is to transfer the variable load and rpm provided by the power source via a set of gears to achieve Speed in the case of power driven vehicles. Engine load and rpm are completely independent of gearing. THAT is dependent on fuel supply regulated by the throttle control and the force or load exerted by the resistance.

The engine is the INPUT and SPEED is the output. No SPEED, No movement.

I used SPEED and GEARS as layman`s terms for a simple discussion so as to keep precise mechanics out of it. Everybody understands Speed and Gears, everybody does NOT understand the principles of applied engineering mechanics. I am extremely conversant with the relationship between torque, gear ratio, rpm and resulting speed. e.g :-

A transmission or gearbox provides speed and torque conversions from a rotating power source to another device by using gear ratios. Gears are the rotary equivalent of linear leverage.

The energy path is that you utilise a power source to provide the torque needed to overcome a variable resistance through a set of gear ratio`s - speed is a final by-product of this. Crudely, high resistance = low speed, low resistance = high speed and in comes the gearbox.

Please everybody, I do not wish the topic to be diverted to a lecture on Isaac Newton`s wonderful theories.

John

 

[Tommy Boy]

I am not an automobile enthusiast, treating the monster as purely a set of wheels to get me from A to B. I do know the beast very well in a mechanical and electrical way through my engineering experience.

BUT - I have often wondered why people choose an automatic transmission as against a manual one. I have never driven an automatic, I guess it is a personal thing where I prefer to do my own gear selection in accordance with speed as against letting some robot do it.

Cat amongst the pigeons ? Auto`s are OK for women who do not understand in the slightest why the car is moving let alone have any knowledge about gear change relative to speed

What do you all think and why ? Manual or automatic ?

John Bull

There is a very simple answer as to why people choose automatic over manual.

It's because people are lazy, they don't want to push the clutch and shift 100 times a day going back and forth from work and to the store and everywhere else. Just put it in D and go go go, R when necessary.