How does a torque convertor transmission work in automobiles? There is a combustion in the engine, a crankshaft, that converts it into a rotary moment, so where does this rotary moment go and how are the shifts changing? Obviously, ATF running somewhere, along where? Doing what?

Question

How does a torque convertor transmission work in automobiles? There is a combustion in the engine, a crankshaft, that converts it into a rotary moment, so where does this rotary moment go and how are the shifts changing? Obviously, ATF running somewhere, along where? Doing what?

In: Engineering

Answer 1

Imagine you have an electric fan. The blades spin around and around, pushing air.

Now imaging you have a toy pinwheel. What would happen if you put the toy pinwheel in front of the fan? It would turn.

Now imaging that the toy pinwheel, instead of just spinning around, was connected via complicated system of gears and shafts to some wheels. Now, when the pinwheel turns, the wheels will turn.

But, and this is the important bit, if the pinwheel doesn’t turn, the electric fan can continue to turn.

Now imagine that instead of an electric fan, your fan is connected to a gasoline motor. And imagine that instead of pushing air, it is pushing automatic transmission fluid. And the complicated system of gears and shafts is the automatic transmission.

There are complications, of course. Some automatic transmissions don’t have a complicated system of gears and shafts, but a complicated system of belts and cones, and some have a complicated system of gears and electric motors. And so on.