OT: "Mixed up the brake and accelerator"?!?

[Ralph Mowery]

Didn't one car have the push buttons in the middle of the stering wheel ?

Now some have done away with the shift lever and gone to a big dial type knob.

[Clare Snyder]

That D-R-L shift pattern was really trick too --- "R for Racing" between drive and low. Miss that shift and you either left a fishook or a driveshaft on the road - - - With the six, starting in drive got you to 60 by breakfast time tomorrow. The 3 speed fluid drive was much mor conventional - and you COULD hanf the overdrive from the standard 3 speed on the end.

I had a 53 Coronet "hemi"with the 3 speed standard and OD.

[Clare Snyder]

Chrysler never used a real pre-selector. The M6 was the closest - a 2 speed behind a torque converter with lockup.- with a clutch. IIRC on the gyromatic the clutch was vacuum operated - but I may be wrong on that. That is one Mopar setup I never drove. Gyromatic or HyDrive IIRC. Fluid drive didn't use a torque converter - it used a fluid coupling and clutch and a standard 3 speed box - no "lockup".

[Commander Kinsey]

Mine have all been a lifting collar. Plus a spring you have to push hard against to go further left. And all of them have been to the left of 1st. Before this thread I had never heard of a car with reverse to the right.

I liked my Ford Sierra - the reverse light would engage as you pushed the lever to the left, but reverse gear didn't engage until you then pushed it forwards. This meant I could flash my reverse lights at someone who was behind me and annoying me, even while I was going 60mph. Apparently it's illegal for a car to do that - reverse lights must not engage until you're in reverse. Somebody never told Ford :-)

Try a Citroen 2CV, where the lever stuck out of the dash!

I drove my neighbour's antique Austin Gypsy a few times, that was fun. No 1st synchromesh at all and a dodgy clutch. Not possible to engage 1st without switching off the engine. Max speed I got out of it was 45mph in top gear (4th) which shook the whole car.

I thought all cars did that?

Strange, all mine I can engage reverse while still rolling forwards, and 1st while still rolling backwards. I don't bother braking when doing a 3 point turn for example.

That would be annoying when swapping a lot to do a tight maneuver.

I've never had a car which was difficult to find any gear. They've always been 1 3 5 on the top, 2 4 on the bottom (below 1 3). R left of 1. I just pop it out of the gear I'm in and push it to where I need it. My current car doesn't even have a diagram on the top of the gearstick. Just a bright red circle. Because it's a sports gearbox I guess.

I drove one of those once, it sounded like the engine was powered by hamsters.

[Dave Liquorice]

Rubbish it's quick forward or back movement of the lever across across the box. Just shove it hard diagonally either way and you toggle R and 1.

Unlike the awkward back, across (but not too far for R to 1), forward movement required with R left of 1.

[Dave Plowman (News]

A friend had a BSA car with a pre-select box. Dunno which was rarer. ;-)

[Commander Kinsey]

My elderly neighbour can't remember which bin is which, it's quite depressing. In the 21st century we really should have sorted out how to stop brains deteriorating. What are we doing?

[rbowman]

That's the one. It was early in the development of automatic transmissions and had both a clutch and a fluid coupling.

Mine had the tartan plaid upholstery.

My to-be father-in-law had a thing about Checkers. She went to a different high school but her brother was in my high school and offered to finance the senior prom if I took his sister. I was 16 and couldn't drive at night so it had the added advantage of coming with a ride. Maybe not my finest moment but so it goes.

Several years later the old man was still into Checkers and we borrowed the silver one for a Christmas jaunt to Mexico. Sammy couldn't drive for shit but kept whining 'It's my father's car. Let me drive.' We finally gave in and he made it about 100 miles before rolling it outside of Mayfield KY. They towed the wreck to a garage in town where it was a wonderment to the townspeople. "Is that thar one of them Mercedes Benz things?"

Other than NY city cabs, Checkers were mostly used for movies set in central Europe where they wanted a car nobody would recognize.

The first photo nails it. They were interesting to work on. The engine was a Chevy of some sort in that era but the rest came from the parts bin. They definitely were roomy. Making out in the back seat was a whole different experience than the back seat of my '51 Chevy coupe.

[rbowman]

No, the Chrysler semi-automatic transmissions were sui generis. They were called tiptoe-matics because mostly you didn't use the clutch.

[rbowman]

Mine was a '60, the zenith of the fin era but the layout was similar. iirc the pushbuttons were round.

The speedometer was another space age touch. It was in a horizontal pod on top of the dash. The mechanism was a tube sort of like a small fluorescent, white with a red spiral. One end had a flat coil spring calibrated for the speedometer cable impulses. The front panel was the mask with a thin rectangular cutout with speed markings below it. The net effect was a red ribbon advancing across the face of the speedometer.

It didn't work all that well. One day in a state of altered consciousness when I lived through a verse of a David Crosby song

"Must be because I had the flu for Christmas And I'm not feelin' up to par It increases my paranoia Like lookin' at my mirror and seein' a police car"

I didn't have a clue how fast I was going and probably was doing about

20 when he pulled me over. After a cursory search and a discussion of why my license plate was held on with thumb screws he let me go.

[rbowman]

The infamous Edsel Teletouch. At least the Mopar pushbutton transmissions were just a mechanical cable going down to the Torqueflite.

[Rod Speed]

I don't even do that anymore, usually go from third to overdrive fifth when out of town on a 100kmph speed limit road.

I normally don't, I normally am operating far enough ahead that I only need to let the car slow down by itself.

Its legally required here, and when leaving a roundabout now although that last is quite recent.

Yeah, I do too. And go down the very steep ramp into the underground carpark in first and don't use the brakes at all because I have to be in first to go slow enough over the gutter from the road otherwise I ground the air dam on the front of the car on that dip.

[Clare Snyder]

The Edsel

[NY]

Yes I will often accelerate through the gears to 4th, then if I'm more or less that the speed I want to be, change directly from there to 6th.

Going the other way, it's quite common to drive up to a junction in 4th or

5th, see that there's nothing coming and then change straight into 2nd to accelerate away again. None of this 5 -> 4 -> 3 -> 2 -> 1 lark. My IAM instructor said a good driver should be able to change *smoothly* from any gear to any other (even if they were a long way apart).

Oh yes, I will always try to slow down by lifting off the power as a first resort, unlike my dad who was sometimes an always-on driver: always on the power, then always on the brake, with no coasting in between.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Old RWD with big transmission tunnels and wheels ahead of the cabin had them the OTHER way.

[Dave Plowman (News]

Not an auto, though. Definition of that is one that changes gears itself.

The fluid flywheel replaced the clutch on a manual for starting off. The 'clutch' pedal operated the brake bands in the epicyclic box. But not intended to be used as a clutch in the normal meaning of it. If you did, the bands would soon wear out.

It's true early autos were a development of this design of box, though.

Rover designed and made a real oddball fitted to some P4 versions. A two speed plus reverse manual box, with a torque converter and overdrive which operated on both forward gears. So was a form of auto with a high and low drive range.

[rbowman]

In the Mopar design, the clutch was a conventional clutch.

[Commander Kinsey]

I fail to see why they still make manual transmission anywhere. It has no advantage whatsoever. Autos give the driver less things to do, so they can concentrate more on the road. They go on and on about how a mobile phone can distract a driver, yet changing gear is somehow ok? Both take your attention and one of your hands.

[Commander Kinsey]

How odd that every car I've had has the pedals in identical positions. Maybe the UK has stricter requirements?

Even if you press the wrong pedal, it's easy to simply let go of it again. There's no excuse fo doing something wrong for more than a fraction of a second.

[rbowman]

If shifting takes all your attention you don't have much.