GEAR CHANGING

Hawera Star, Volume LI, 3 January 1931, Page 12

GEAR CHANGING

AMERICAN IDEAS

American motor car engineers are making a concerted attack on the age-old problem of gear-shifting. This year and last, no less than sixteen new transmission devices have been added to present American models. The aim is to simplify the process by which the average car is operated from the driver’s standpoint. It has long been conceded that the “wobble-stick” —a name that used to be applied to the gear-shift lever—should he changed.

The chassis engineers and their associates who collaborate with them on engine design, have sought for years to work out new models. They have argued that there should be no earthly reason why a car should have to he put through hop, step, and jump stages to get under way. For such, in effect, is what conventional gearshifting amounts to. Substitutes have been tried, hut have not been generally adopted. Steam, as used in the “steamer” cars of years ago, got under way from gear shifting and was conceded to be one of the smoothest methods of both starting an engine and operating it through variable speeds. The steam cars were economical too, besides being silent and smooth running. They failed to catch on largely because steam, as a power medium for all kinds of machinery, had been known and used for years without number and was deemed oldfashioned.

Gasoline power, being newer, exercised a more potent appeal to the imagination of both engineers and public ; therefore it stayed for motor cars and the gear changing with it. The next thing to he tried was the gaselectric. This type of power plant employed a gas engine to operate on electrical generator. It let a car create the power that operated it as it travelled along, applying the current directly to the rear wheels. In theory it was good. As worked out, however, it proved about 25 per cent more expensive to build than the gas engine alone. It was heavier and, in motor car types, more expensive to operate and service. Nevertheless, it has found a place in bus and coach use where the loads are heavier and passengers pay fares. Steam found partial use for the same purposes, hut to a less extent.

VARIETY OF DEVICE

In automobiles the effort to improve the gear-shift began three years ago. and it /lias been taken up hv tiu> engineering departments of virtually all companies. It has resulted in a variety of devices, ranging all the way from four-speed transmissions to ‘“free wheeling” ancl “syncro-mesh” mechanisms, all of which are coming into wide useage on cars in the higher price classes The merits and dismerits of four speeds in place of the three associated with the term “standard gear shift” are still matters of debate among the engineering fraternity. By some it is held that adding a fourth or “double high” has advantages because it permits high car speed at lower crankshaft speed m the top range. Therefore it is a fuel saver and allows fast travel with less engine noise. The four-speed engineers, in effect, divide the range between second and high into two, and use third to give faster acceleration than the conventional second gear. Opponents of this change point out, however, that such an arrangement means more shifting than jby the older method because there are more positions in the gear. Besides .use in motor cars, the fourspeed principle also has been applied to trucks and commercial cars, but

.speed in this type of vehicle is an extra low-gear for use in starting with an extra heavy load or pulling out of mudlioles or through sand. For free wheeling, the claim is that it eliminates use of the clutch except to start or go into reverse, and that economy of both fuel and oil becomes a worth-while factor. Syncro-mesh, now applied to straight eights as well as the y -eight and V-sixteen types, allows gear-shifting and smoothness and no clashing at higher speeds of which the engines are capable. One advance with which virtually all transmissions can be credited as the result of recent research, is faster acceleration. The cars of two and three years ago were barely capable of producing 35 miles an hour in second gear, and were proportionately slower in getting under way from first gear. Now they flash away up to -1-5 and £0 miles an hour and beyond it, depending on the increased power that an engine may he capable of.