Technical The Unusual Transmission Thread

An old racing kludge that interested me fro stree reasons when it was developed and still has some attractions...
The automatic trans (usually Torqueflite) with clutch and flywheel and fingers on the pump tp allow pressure plate to spin that.
Racers use it entirely because engine power had outstripped the available 4 speeds for racing and super high stall converters had not yet come into use.
It interested me because I had always wondered abut AT planetary gearing and cluch/band shifting seemed like a better system than mechanical synchros or moving gears, both full of potential problems in durability and speed for shifting.
Seems like you could have very fast and smooth shifting without banging a lot of steel bits to death...

 

Not really exotic but every time somebody asks me what tranny is in my roadster I get blank stares when I start to explain the Econoline 3 speed full synchro top loser side shift tranny. Remove the side shift forks and plug the holes and find a Jeep three speed shifter, take off the top plate and drop the shifter in. Blank Stare. Well Okay.
The same can be done with a Ford 4 speed top loader and a Jeep 4 speed shifter but it takes a little more modification.
Gary

 

Chevy and Ford torqueflights

 

Questions for our members east of the Atlantic ocean; What were some of the makes / models of cars (trucks?) that were built with the Wilson preselector gearbox ?? Was the Wilson preselector only a pre-WW2 item or was manufactured after WW2 ?? Ratios ?? Another source for more information??

 

Off the top of my head, Daimlers, Armstrong-Siddeleys, some Rileys. There would certainly be more. US automatics generally displaced the Wilson preselector 'box at the luxury end as soon as they became available around the early-mid '50s. Can't help you with ratios, I'm afraid, though I'd expect that they'd vary from application to application.

 

Surprised the GM turbo-glide hasn't been mentioned,better tranny than it got credit for,but it didn't "act" like people expected

 

I've been mulling over bistabilizing a common American automatic again. I love it when lots of pacing back and forth with bean inclined actually results in things becoming simpler. My problem was this: fat lot of good bistability via check valves etc. would do if my "finesse pedal" dumps all the pressure they've been holding. I can't get the pressure back unless the pump is turning, which defeats the object. So perhaps the "finesse pedal" isn't a ball valve like the circle-trackers use but some kind of master cylinder/piston pump arrangement, but I'd not go there if I can avoid it.

All need for check valves and such goes away if there is a reliable, though not necessarily inexhaustible, external source of hydraulic pressure to draw from. Compact air-driven free-piston hydraulic pumps exist which can turn an air-suspension reservoir into such a source. Transmission hydraulics generally displace tiny volumes of fluid: a 2-gallon air tank can hold enough air at 100psi to repressurize the forward clutch in a transmission to, say, 150psi over fifty times before the tank pressure equals the pump regulator pressure. I'd still need a valve in the supply to the clutch, which closes when the ball valve opens, to prevent fluid from simply cycling through and draining the air tank. But apart from that any full-manual VB with engine braking in all gears will do me.

I'm starting to think of OBA the way Citroën thought of hydraulics. It has 1001 uses. There are even compact air clutches which can be used instead of the electromagnetic clutch on the compressor.

 

This got Mart pretty excited.

 

The best transmission ever!!!




Sent by homing pigeon

 

i thought some of the mercedes transmissions used a remote pump to boost the pressure?

 

I've merely scratched the surface of the cleverness in a 722.6.

 

i recently took a 722.01 apart because it wouldn't upshift. i have to say they dropped the ball on the governor/speedo gear/rear pump cam "attachment". well built, compact and efficient but like everything mercedes builds it is "annoyingly precise".
i got it to work perfectly..........

 

The Hillman Easydrive transmission had a magnetic clutch.

http://www.andymurkin.net/Hillman/Hillinfo/Easidrive.html

"Basic operating principle depends on the use of magnetic powder couplings. In these, driving and driven members are separated by a small air gap partly filled with small particles of ferrous metal. Creation of a magnetic field in these particles causes them to offer frictional resistance to relative movement between the separate members, this resistance increasing with the strength of the field until the coupling becomes virtually solid.

 

@Bruce Lancaster mentioned clutch-autos above. There is of course the opposite of that, a manual gearbox behind a torque converter. The Mopar Fluid Drive system which springs to mind isn't really all that exciting, but I think there is something to be said for the principle.

I was thinking along those lines recently and eventually got to thinking about Frazer Nash chain transmissions. The ultimate FN chain drive setup I posted on the Cyclecars thread features a torque converter, which takes torque to the first-speed chain only:

 

Yes, I know its an old thread…
An obscure transmission that has always fascinated me is the Hobbs Mecha-Matic. It was developed by the father of racing driver David Hobbs (and no relation, as far as I know, to the inventor of the Hobbs transmission shown above). DH raced a Jaguar XK150 and later a Lotus Elite, both with the Mecha-Matic. Production models were a four-speed, but some experimental units had five.
Here is Motorsport magazine’s description of its operation:

All forward ratios and reverse on the Westinghouse Hobbs automatic transmission are obtained from a compound planetary gear train, and consequently all gearing is in constant mesh. The main clutch provides for completely automatic take-up of drive from a standstill, and the indirect ratios are engaged simply by the application of hydraulically-actuated “disc” brakes acting on parts of the gearing, while for top gear a secondary clutch is engaged which locks the gear train to provide direct drive. An oil pump, housed in the hydraulic unit and driven off the engine through the clutch unit, provides the pressure for operating both clutches and brakes, and simple valves control the distribution. A second oil pump, driven off the output shaft of the gearbox, is sensitive to road speed. This works in conjunction with a valve connecter, to the throttle pedal, and hence sensitive to driving conditions, to provide for fully automatic gear changing.​

 

Interesting: thanks for that — though the linked article is paywalled. I did find this:


I've been looking at this topic again, wondering about the possibility of building something out of a modern ZF automatic. That process drew my attention to the de Normanville Safety Gearbox of the '30s. The link in that thread is also to Motor Sport magazine, and therefore paywalled. The only pic I could find shows the open underside:

What passes for a valve body has much the same look and feel I imagine the modified ZF's would have.

 

After driving a vehicle locked into 3rd gear for quite some time I can't help but think that while slow it would be a pretty pleasant transmission in a ~3000lb ~250hp car.

 

A PreWarCar query had another view of the underside of the NSG, but I couldn’t copy the image.

 

If you click on the page thumbnail above the paywalled article, sometimes it lets you see the jpeg. I’m not sure why it isn’t consistent. It used to be easier to navigate the jpegs.

 

Same pic: I got it from the owner's blog.

 

This is the pic I was referring to, it’s turned 90 degrees and looks deeper into the transmission:


I haven’t seen the owner’s club site.

 

just saw this thread ... this text is from a post I did a couple of hours ago on a Ford-Jeep in the Specials thread.

 

The S shaped tubing in the center must have been something to fabricate ..

 

Well that’s just great, another shifty thread. Hehe.

 

my sister had a 1968 Austin America when she was in high school. After she went off to college I drove the snot out that thing. Like its predecessor the Mini, the transmission gears were under the crankshaft and ran in engine oil...but this was an automatic.

"The AP (Automotive Products) Automatic Transmission was first introduced at the Earl's Court Motor Show in 1965 and debuted in the Austin and Morris 1100's beginning in October 1965. It is the result of a 10 year joint project between the Automotive Products Company Ltd. in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, England and the British Motor Corporation Ltd. in Longbridge, Birmingham, England. This unique transmission has many achievements:

• It is possibly the only automatic in the world to run on engine oil.
• It was far ahead of it's time and won the Queen's Award to Industry at the 1965 motor show.
• It is considered the forerunner of the modern "automatic/manual" transmission.
• It is considered the first automatic fitted to a transverse mounted engine.
• It is considered the first automatic fitted to a mass produced compact car.
• There have been numerous upgraded versions of this transmission and it was still in production for use in the Mini and the Metro until 2001.
• An internal auxiliary pump allows the vehicle to be tow started."

https://web.archive.org/web/20131018030057/http://www.austinmemories.com/page172A/page172.html

 

As it happens I'm not unfamiliar with that gearbox! My grandmother had one.

Most local drivers know how to drive a manual, but my grandmother only learned to drive when she was in her 60s, after my grandfather died, and never learned to change gears. My grandfather always had Austins. My dad got together with his siblings to get my grandmother an Austin Apache — an ADO16 with rather Triumph-like Michelotti-designed front and rear, used only in South Africa and Spain — with that automatic transmission.

Hers was blue.

What I remember from driving it was how readily it downshifted on deceleration, down through all four ratios. The quadrant shifter allowed you to hold any gear, which alarmed my grandmother when I did it. When my grandmother stopped driving, my late cousin took over the car. It was eventually stolen off the street where he was attending night classes.

 

Didnt this trans also have a flathead ford bolt pattern?

 

I've always been a 4 speed guy so it's not surprising I've been attracted to these transmissions, at least in the Chrysler applications, not much information out there though.
Found an interesting article connected to the photo in this post.

Here:
https://www.300f.com/4speed.htm

 

There was an article in one of the automotive rags on this back in the '60's on how to do this. A friend of mine did one and it sort of worked. Later on, someone manufactured a case to accomplish the same result. Called the "X" box.