As the title says, I know that different shifts mean different gear sizes bein used, but I don’t understand why it makes you unable to start moving the car. I have been able to start a couple of cars on the 2nd shift as an experiment and I understand that I could damage the car and I do it just once for testing purposes but I don’t understand why I cannot do so on other shifts. To clarify, I mean start as in start moving the car and not just turning the car on. Thanks
In: Engineering
Gears are just the wheel equivalent of a lever. Like, pulling a nail for example – you could never do this with your fingers because you’re not strong enough, but the claw of the hammer allows you to multiply your strength with leverage, gears do the same thing.
Lower gears have more leverage for getting the car going, but are limited by a slow top speed. Once you get rolling, you can shift into higher gears to lose leverage but gain speed.
Many trucks, especially big ones like dump trucks and 18-wheelers, only have those low gears to help them get moving when loaded. If the dump truck is empty, or no trailer attached, you can start them in a much higher gear because the extra leverage is not needed when they’re not fully loaded.
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