8 speed skyline!!!

[prodigy]

I read that, but it sounds like a bicycle with gears. How you have your crank gears and your sprocket gears, and all together you can get many different "speeds" with the combination amongst the two.

[nissanguy_24]

Imagine having two gears. One gear can expand and contract (it would actually be a series of gear segments hooked up on extending arms) and a chain running between them. You can increase the size of the first gear changing the ratios, or you can shrink it. Thats the basic idea behind the continuously variable transmission. The smallers and largest size possibles determins the max and minimum gear values. And the transmission is capable of any ratio between them seemlessly.

There are a number of different techniques to get something like this to work. every manufacturer has there own systems but thats the idea. With a 8 speed. all you do is program the computer controlling the gear size for 8 preset gears. Theres no reason why it wouldnt also include a button to toggle to fully automatic mode.

There would be no need for a clutch, however theres nothing stopping you from having one between the transmission and the engine like normal and letting the computer control the gears in that way.. the transmission ratios could be changed on the fly.. who knows what other techniques could be figured out with this transmission. it would be different, but different is not always bad.

[AtroXR7]

I've got a few simple CV boxes around here... and paddles would be a very annoying way to control them. Optimally a CVT would have a lever... similar to that of a bike to adjust they gearing. The 7-8 gears, which ever it is would make a miss-shift almost harmless since the gearing would be so tight. This is not a performance choice tho, this is definately luxury trying to look like performance with the paddles, advertising itself with the F1 info. The idea of it is to make the ride as smooth as possible, wheile still getting high performance for the vehicle. Most top performance shifting units are up/down units where you simply pop it one way to shift up, and the other to shift down. Or... in the case of dragsters.... such as modern top fuel dragsters.... there is no shifting... those things run on 7 gear timers. The only thing the drivers have to do is step on the gas and steer... but when you're talking about going 0-300mph faster than any of our cars can do 0-60mph.... its not an easy task.
Im not totally against this transmission tho... i think it would be kinda fun. I think it would suit hydrogen cars really well, since they have only 60hp... they need to make the best of it and the best of gearing. They also dont have a powerband. they run about 200 lbs of torque thats available immediately due to the nature of the electric circuit power.

[nissanguy_24]

The main advantage of the CVT is it can replace the slushbox automatic and still deliver performance and fuel economy on par, if not better then a manual.

[blargonator]

sport compact car actually had a small section on this a while back and domestic car makers supposedly want to stop making manual cars all together so the bastard child of both manual and automatic has been put into use because it has been around for a while. it is to save money though. it is sort of messed up the way they work. there are two transmissions and one has lets say 1,3, and 5 and the other has fo course 2 and 4 (im not sure about reverse though) it switches between those and sometims on the first tranmision lets say a person was in 5th it may almost shift down to third but go to fourth. im going to go look for the issue of scc and i will tell you the month it was.

[AtroXR7]

People are always saying automatics dont perform well... but they do. The factory design is often flawed simply because they have only 4 gears and usually lose an extra 3-5% of the power due to bad internals. A tuned valve body and good torque converter can do wonders on a rebuilt transmission with performance in mind. Go look at drag track records, manuals are almost always slower.

[prodigy]

It is usually because of a drivers inconsistence that the manual would be slower than the auto. That is the only reason why auto is better in drag, because of consistency.

[blargonator]

one thing with high powered automatics is the transmissions are supposed to be easy to destroy. cars that are automatic like a celica that is N/A is made to handle the stock power. if it was turbo it would get too much power and the shifting would be messed up because automatics usually shift at a set rpm so at that same rpm it might have too much power.

[prodigy]

Yes, you might have to change gear ratios depending on the power and application.

[blargonator]

i would personally prefer a regular manual because there is a clutch so good ol' revs are made simple while at a stop. the new skyline is wierd i would easily take a skyline GT-S over the new one because there is a G35 coupe in my area and they look sort of wierd. the 80's.......terrible everything except cars. oh does anyone remember MC Hammer's cartoon show? so many hours of tv stored in my nanananoggin

[Craftsman]

That thing is CVT... By an engineering standpoint, that car has no gears. It's tuned... Therefore there is no torque spikes. It's nowhere near what Automatic Transmissions are. Automatics have locked gears that don't change in ratio. And because they are, they are driftable. Not saying that they are good for it, but that they can do it.

CVT doesn't even come with a clutch. There is no need for one. Nothing is smoother than a CVT transmission. Last time I checked, spikes in torque help make drifting possible.

Matt.

[AtroXR7]

thats sums up everything just said in the last 2 pages.. *sigh*

blarg, just about anything in stock condition is easy to destroy. Its just a matter of replacing everything with better fiction materials and tougher internals, as well as modifying the valve body to allow faster shifts (normally in an auto, shifts are meant to be smooth so they use shift overlap timing, this creates a lot of heat and burns up the friction material really fast. when you're trying to make the vehicle perform. Sometimes you do have to change gear ratios, but thats a very difficult task in real life, its not like a quick swap in gran turismo. Simply enough, most transmissions dont have alternate gears available, and especially not planetary gear sets.

prodigy is right tho, auto's are kings of consistancy and precision. Unfortunately for drifters, they have no clutch control, and it takes a decent amount of aftermarkey $ to make them even shift "like" a manual. The parts are out there for me to do this with my cougar... but that still doesnt make it as fun to drive or as good for drifting. Eventually I may just do the custom fab work to make an extention box so I can use a T45 transmission. I have the blueprints for all that work, the annoying thing is squeezing a clutch pedal into my cabin and working in the tight spaces of a V8 engine crammed into a car designed to hold a v6.

[blargonator]

yeah craftsman explained everything. personally i see it in black or white (automatic or manual) like i said if it is operating at peak power it would be extremely hard to drift. anyways then you cant move the shifter around for fun.....just boring paddles.

[Craftsman]

Well, CVT is great for any other form of racing that doesn't require massive bursts of torque...

Matt.

[prodigy]

Yeah to drift well you definately have to go with the good ol' manual tranny.