Mate of mine had a car like that once, I remember everyone who was travelling with him one time having to push it uphill when the thing gave out at the traffic lights. Good times...
cybeast said: What happen? Sorry, but I don't understand... did the machine died or something else happen?
As it says, Futo popped the clutch.
In manual transmission cars, you have to manually adjust the car's gear in order to match the speed your car is going, and the clutch is used to disengage the driveshaft from the gears while the gears are being changed.
In operation, the car's rotating driveshaft provides the power to reset the engine's pistons to fire again, setting up a chain reaction. The battery is only needed to start the chain reaction, which is why, if you can get the car started, the battery isn't necessary.
At low speeds, failing to properly use the clutch (releasing it too fast) will cause the gears to jam, putting undue wear and tear on your gearbox and stalling the car. (Hence, after finally getting the car started, it just stalled and the engine died, putting them back to square one.)
It's also actually possible to pop the clutch while you are already moving at a fast enough speed to manually start an engine without a battery - by simply building up speed, you can pop the clutch, and get the driveshaft spinning (and start the chain reaction) by pushing a car down a hill or the like.
If your reflexes are good enough (or you just get plain lucky), you can bring a car back from the brink at this point with a well-timed application of throttle and disengaging the clutch. It won't sound pretty, and it'll still jerk, but the engine will keep turning...
Skyknight said: We're going to learn this is the first time Futo's ever driven a manual transmission, I take it?
While manual transmission usually just takes some practice to get the hang of, some people never learn how to handle it even though they own a car with manual transmission... making their passengers fear for their lives. *shudder* Maybe Futo’s one of those.
kittey said: While manual transmission usually just takes some practice to get the hang of, some people never learn how to handle it even though they own a car with manual transmission... making their passengers fear for their lives. *shudder* Maybe Futo’s one of those.
She's been resurrected just recently. It takes time to get used to the fact your vehicle doesn't have hooves and you can't stuff oats into the fuel tank.
Heparine said: She's been resurrected just recently. It takes time to get used to the fact your vehicle doesn't have hooves and you can't stuff oats into the fuel tank.
Well, you CAN stuff oats into the fuel tank. The results are usually quite interesting.
JakeBob said: Well, you CAN stuff oats into the fuel tank. The results are usually quite interesting.
Sugar is an even better additive. Or anything that polymerizes at high temperature.
In fact, in and after WWII, American spies were given the oil of some sort of tropical nut (whose exact name eludes me at the moment) sealed in condoms. They were to slip the condom into the fuel tank of the targeted vehicles, where the gasoline would dissolve the condom, allowing the oil to mix into the fuel. Then when the engine was started, the oil polymerized on the first stroke of each cylinder, firmly sealing the delicate valves shut and jamming the pistons like fudge jams your jaws. This allowed the spy to 'execute an expeditious retreat'.
I don't know if this was actually deployed, or just distributed as a backup, but I can imagine the look on the pursuers' faces when the engine moved, then it didn't.
I knew sugar was a bad thing to put into a gas tank, but I never knew it was because it polymerizes at the operating temperature of the engine.
I also never knew exactly what popping the clutch does, just that it makes a horrible noise, stalls running engines, and starts dead engines if the car is in motion.
JakeBob said: Gonna be honest, I'm surprised people here don't know what happened. Then again, I guess not everyone's learned to drive a manual...
We're getting to an age where only car enthusiasts and people with real budget cars will ever have even touched a manual transmission or know what a clutch is, or even how the car works, really.
I only ever touched a manual transmission because my father borrowed an old car from someone he works with specifically to teach my brother and me how to use one, if we ever needed it. (And that thing had a horrifically fussy clutch, and I easily popped that clutch and stalled the car twenty or so times before I ever found the sweet spot to do it properly... And even then, I didn't get particularly reliable at pulling it off.)
BadRoad said: I knew sugar was a bad thing to put into a gas tank, but I never knew it was because it polymerizes at the operating temperature of the engine.
I also never knew exactly what popping the clutch does, just that it makes a horrible noise, stalls running engines, and starts dead engines if the car is in motion.
Sugar turns to caramel with marginal amounts of heat.
Also, since I'm in infodump mode, anyway...
The gearbox is related to a basic principle of how gears work in transferring power and motion. If you have a gear that is powered to revolve once per second, and has 10 teeth on the gear, and attach it to a gear that has 5 teeth on the gear (or in other words, a gear half the size of the first), then the second gear will spin at twice the speed of the powered gear. This is called "Gearing Up".
It's opposite is called "Gearing Down", and involves driving a gear that is larger and has more teeth with a smaller gear, causing the gear to turn slower.
It is important to bear in mind that (energy loss to friction notwithstanding) the actual amount of FORCE behind a gear does not change in this equation - only the speed does. Hence, the reason you would want to gear down is because, even though the gear turns slower, it actually has several times as much force per complete revolution (called "torque" when applied to rotational force) as a geared down gear.
The reason that cars change gears is because at slower speeds, or especially when the car is stopped, the car needs more torque to overcome the inertia of the car at rest - after gaining almost any speed at all, you need to shift into second gear, and you need to keep switching to higher gears (which means gearing up to smaller gears with less teeth that spin faster but with less torque) because in the higher-torque low gears, the engine has to go through many times more revolutions to get the wheels going the same speed as they would at a higher gear. When you already have built up a significant amount of speed, the inertia of the car helps you need less torque to keep going.
The gearbox basically sits as an intermediary between the shaft that is powered by the car's engine and the shaft that actually powers the wheels of the car. You have to use the clutch to disengage the shaft from the gears while you are changing out those gears, or the gears will jam.
The reason you get that horrible noise is that you're basically pitting several tons of force (depending on your speed) against the strength of that gear that isn't meant to be twisted in that manner, and the several tons of force is probably going to win unless you are going so slow you just jam your car to a stop and stall the engine.
BadRoad said: I figured she ought to be holding them above her head with one hand...
would have been better if they didn't even need Kogasauthor's car since Iku is the one holding them. But as character inserts, an Iku with jumper cables is fine too.
I love you guys. Should I pitch in with the differing output characteristics of internal combustion vs. electric motors? Probably not, I'm a little fuzzy on it.
NWSiaCB said: We're getting to an age where only car enthusiasts and people with real budget cars will ever have even touched a manual transmission or know what a clutch is, or even how the car works, really.
Well, some young adults might still have experience with manual transmission cars, even if it’s only from the passenger seat.
I didn’t get the clutch thing because they call it “coupling” around here, and some children book I’ve read when younger mixed up the term with the differential wheel. ^^;
NWSiaCB said: We're getting to an age where only car enthusiasts and people with real budget cars will ever have even touched a manual transmission or know what a clutch is, or even how the car works, really.
Well, I don't know where you guys live, but here in Brazil almost every car has manual transmission, and only the expensive ones are automatic. I guess as long as we're still a developing country (or as long as our taxes stay high - really, the tax burden on cars here is ludicrous) we'll still have manual transmission cars.
asdfqwerzxcv said: Well, I don't know where you guys live, but here in Brazil almost every car has manual transmission, [...]
Actually it’s pretty similar in Germany. Automatic transmissions seem to be a fad right now, but until recently pretty much only three groups of people had it:
senior citizens
the ones that need all their attention just to stay on the road
snobs who need automatic transmission to feel special
So yeah, over here automatic transmission has a reputation of being for people who can’t drive properly.
kittey said: Actually it’s pretty similar in Germany. Automatic transmissions seem to be a fad right now, but until recently pretty much only three groups of people had it:
senior citizens
the ones that need all their attention just to stay on the road
snobs who need automatic transmission to feel special
So yeah, over here automatic transmission has a reputation of being for people who can’t drive properly.
Well, by the standards over here in Eagleland, you Germans are pretty weird when it comes to cars. You guys hate things like cup holders or seats that have any sort of padding at all, and have this bizarre philosophy that seems to dictate how we should all be focused completely and utterly on driving at all times even when you are the passenger.
Comparably, to an American, driving is something that should be as comfortable as possible, since you're probably going to spend a huge chunk of your life on the road. Automatic transmissions are capable of doing the job of a manual transmission at least as well as a human with essentially no chances of a mistake, and so saying that you prefer manual is comparable to saying you prefer a slide rule or abacus to using a computer for their accounting - something that is only done by people that think it makes them elite to do something by hand when they don't have to. If and when we get some sort of autopilot for cars, most Americans will be happy to just let the computer take over, and simply stay on their phones the whole time they are being driven to their destination, because driving is nothing more than a means to an end to most Americans.
I believe that some people prefer manual transmissions not because they want to feel "elite", but because they enjoy the driving experience. I'm not an automobile nor a mechanical expert so please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that a manual transmission gives you more control over how you want your car to move, and there are people who enjoy that.
It can also be a change of paradigm that not everyone - especially the older and more conservative ones - is willing to take. I don't know the details, but I believe you guys in the US have had automatics for a long time now. On the other hand, in Brazil and, as kittey said, in Germany, maybe automatics are only now getting more public acceptance.
I'm not saying manual transmission is better than automatic or vice-versa, in my opinion each one has its pros and cons. But I'd be the first to adopt an autopiloting car when it comes out, Google's experiments with its autonomous car are fantastic.
A manual transmission does allow one greater control over the car's speed-torque ratio, something that an automatic transmission doesn't.
Most automatic transmissions only allow forcing gears one and two. I, for one, want to be able to shift down at will for greater torque, and not just into gear 1-2 for steep inclines, but maybe 5-to-4 for overtaking. On the other hand, the automatics does make life more comfortable, especially the never Variomatic transmissions, that changes gear ratios seamlessly, which makes for an amazingly smooth drive , even if the driver has a bumpy throttle foot...
I'm also willing to say American's as a whole are more lazy when it comes to driving as NWSiaCB said, American cars in the US tend to try to be made as almost like a 2nd home since you will be spending a large amount of your time in one.
And here in the Netherlands manual transmissions are more popular mostly because they're cheaper in fuel-usage, repairs, replacements and maintenance.
Hey, I've got cables!Ohh! I'll borrow those!It started!Thank you! I truly thank you!I shall be off!VVrrmmmOh, not at all. Take care.She popped the clutch...Chg'n
Chg'nOop.P'chgg