I’m mainly asking because i can’t wrap my head around the concept of stick shift.
ex: would 1st gear be good from “X” mph until “Y” mph and then you need to switch to 2nd gear?
In: Engineering
Yes, they do. First gear is lowest speed up until either 5th or 6th depending on the number of gears. From my experience first gear is from 0 until 15ish mph. So, fully stopped to moving slowly. I usually shifted to second once I had reached the right amount of acceleration and needed to shift up to second. Or, if I needed to slow down and turn a corner, I would downshift and slow down from 3rd or 4th into 2nd for better handling. 5th or 6th would be used for highway driving and most city stop and go driving is done using 1st, 2nd, and 3rd gear.
Gas engines only really work well in a certain RPM range, too low and the engine makes too little power, too high and you risk damaging it and use a lot of fuel.
Gears work by sort of trading speed for acceleration, so in first gear you trade off a lot of speed, to get a lot of force in order to start, which is why the engine revs up very high even at low speeds, but you accelerate really fast. Second gear you keep more speed, and so less acceleration. And finally in 5th or/ 6th you actually trade away acceleration in order to get more speed, and higher fuel efficiency.
This in short means the speed of the car is limited by how the speed of the engine and much speed the gear “trades away” so you have a speed range for every gear
This is absolutely the same in an automatic and a stick shift, just switching e tween these gears works is achieved in very different ways
You got it. It’s just like a multi gear bike in that larger gears are harder to push at lower speeds and smaller gears spin too fast at higher speeds.
The bike however uses a simple slip mechanism to slip the chain from one gear to the next. A car uses a clutch which disengages the gears while you select the next gear then reengage by letting the clutch back out. It’s a touch more complicated than that, but that’s the gist of it.
Yes, pretty much your guess. Depends on the car and number of gears what the x to y ratio is.
Yes and no.
For a given setup, yes. First gear can work from, say, 10 to 30mph. Second from 20 to 60. Third 30 to 90. So on. If you got a different car or transmission, then it could/would be different.
In general, you don’t want to run it all the way to the max. You’d run first gear until shortly after you could switch to second, and second until shortly after you could switch to third. This keeps the engine rpm’s lower, improving efficiency and making for a smoother/quieter ride.
Yes and no.
If you want to know when to switch gears , a better method is to give a look at the rpm’s .
Generally,as long as you are within the 1500-2100 rpm then the gear you are on is fine.
(For example you are on first gear as soon as the rpm reaches 2200rpm its time to switch for second gear -rpm drops to 1700 – hit the throttle when it reaches 2100 its time to upgrade to 3rd etc)
Now the mechanical reason behind this is(simple version) : each gear delivers a certain amount of torque the slower the car is the more torque it needs to accelerate: 1st gear delivers the most torque and 6th gear the least torque but higher speed.
But the trick is that the motor always has the same rpm , so we switch gears in order to keep the motor in its comfort rpm zone.
Took me a solid 10min to write this. English is not my native language, dont hesitate to pm me for further details .
Once you have got used to the sound of your car’s engine, you can tell when to change gear by listening. You might want to be in a lower gear than usual if you are going up a steep hill, or if you are overtaking and need fast acceleration.
A very crude guide is that you should change up out of first at 10 miles an hour, second at 20, third at 30 and so on. This works pretty well in most cars. If the car is working hard, going uphill, carrying an unusually heavy load then you can hang on to the gears a little longer for better acceleration.
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