Manual Transmission Wisconsin

A manual transmission (also known as a stick shift or standard transmission) is a type of transmission used in automotive applications. Manual transmissions often feature a driver-operated clutch and a movable gear selector, although some do not. Most automobile manual transmissions allow the driver to select any gear at any time.

Contemporary automotive manual transmissions are generally available with between 4 and 6 forward gears and one reverse gear, although manual transmissions have been built with as few as 2 and as many as 7 gears. Some manuals are referred to by the number of forward gears they offer (e.g., 5-speed) as a way of distinguishing between automatic or other available manual transmissions. In contrast, a 5-speed automatic transmission is referred to as a 5-speed automatic.

The earliest automotive transmissions were entirely mechanical unsynchronized gearing systems. They could be shifted, with multiple gear ratios available to the operator, and even had reverse. But the gears were engaged by sliding mechanisms or simple clutches, which required skills of timing and careful throttle manipulation when shifting, so that the gears would be spinning at roughly the same speed when engaged; otherwise the teeth would refuse to mesh.

When upshifting, the speed of the gear driven by the engine had to drop to match the speed of the next gear; as this happened naturally when the clutch was depressed, it was just a matter of skill and experience to hear and feel when the gears managed to mesh. However, when downshifting, the gear driven by the engine had to be sped up to mesh with the output gear, requiring engagement of the clutch for the engine to speed up the gears. Double declutching, that is, shifting once to neutral to speed up the gears and again to the lower gear, is sometimes needed. In fact, such transmissions are often easier to shift from without using the clutch at all. The clutch, in these cases, is only used for starting from a standstill. This procedure is common in racing vehicles and most production motorcycles.

Even though automotive transmissions are now almost universally synchronised, heavy trucks and machinery as well as dedicated racing transmissions are still usually nonsynchromesh transmissions, known colloquially as "crashboxes", for several reasons. Being made of brass, synchronizers are prone to wear and breakage more than the actual gears, which are cast iron, and the rotation of all the sets of gears at once results in higher frictional losses. In addition, the process of shifting a synchromesh transmission is slower than that of shifting a nonsynchromesh transmission. For racing of production based transmissions, sometimes half the dogs on the synchros are removed to speed the shifting process, at the expense of much more wear.

Similarly, most modern motorcycles still utilise Unsynchronised transmissions. Synchronisers are generally not necessary or desirable in motorcycle transmissions. The low gear inertias and higher strengths mean that 'forcing' the gears to alter speed is not damaging, and the selector method on modern motorcycles (pedal operated) is not conducive to having the long shift time of a synchronised gearbox. Because of this, it is still necessary to synchronise gear speeds by 'blipping-the-throttle' when shifting into a lower gear on a motorcycle.

A modern gearbox is of the constant mesh type, in which all gears are always in mesh but only one of these meshed pairs of gears is locked to the shaft on which it is mounted at any one time, the others being allowed to rotate freely; thus greatly reducing the skill required to shift gears. Most modern cars are fitted with a synchronised gear box, although it is entirely possible to construct a constant mesh gearbox without synchromesh, as found in motorcycle for example.

In a synchromesh gearbox, the teeth of the gears of all the transmission speeds are always in mesh and rotating, but the gears are not directly rotationally connected to the shafts on which they rotate. Instead, the gears can freely rotate or be locked to the shaft on which they are carried.

The locking mechanism for any individual gear consists of a collar on the shaft which is able to slide sideways so that teeth or "dogs" on its inner surface bridge two circular rings with teeth on their outer circumference; one attached to the gear, one to the shaft. (One collar typically serves for two gears; sliding in one direction selects one transmission speed, in the other direction selects the other) When the rings are bridged by the collar, that particular gear is rotationally locked to the shaft and determines the output speed of the transmission.

To correctly match the speed of the gear to that of the shaft as the gear is engaged, the collar initially applies a force to a cone-shaped brass clutch which is attached to the gear, which brings the speeds to match prior to the collar locking into place. The collar is prevented from bridging the locking rings when the speeds are mismatched by synchro rings (also called blocker rings or balk rings, the latter being spelled "baulk" in the UK). The gearshift lever manipulates the collars using a set of linkages, so arranged so that only one collar may be permitted to lock only one gear at any one time; when "shifting gears", the locking collar from one gear is disengaged and that of another engaged. In a modern gearbox, the action of all of these components is so smooth and fast it is hardly noticed.

The first synchronized transmission system was introduced by Cadillac in 1929. The modern cone system was developed by Porsche and introduced in the 1952 Porsche 356; cone synchronizers were called "Porsche-type" for many years after this. In the early 1950s only the second-third shift was synchromesh in most cars, requiring only a single synchro and a simple linkage; drivers' manuals in cars suggested that if the driver needed to shift from second to first, it was best to come to a complete stop then shift into first and start up again.

With continuing sophistication of mechanical development, however, fully synchromesh transmissions with three speeds, then four speeds, five speeds, six speeds and so on became universal by the 1960s. Reverse gear, however, is not synchromesh, as there is only one reverse gear in the normal automotive transmission and changing gears in reverse is not required.