On 6/8/2011 8:48 AM, Chris Barker wrote:
> Yes, I had some driving lessons in my father's Rambler in around 1969 when we
> lived in Tehran. It was great for me, but it was a manual shift with 3
> forward gears.
I learned to drive in a 1947 Plymouth with three speeds and a column shifter.
Although three ratio trannies sound
inadequate today, they were perfectly good for the engines which which they
were mated. The engines were mostly narrow
bore, long stroke, giving a very different power/torque profile than later
gasoline engine designs.
The engines in these old cars were flat heads. Although OHV engines appeared
in the US in the early 50s, flat heads
were still pretty common for several more years. Their low compression ratios
also meant quite different power and
torque curves than later, OHV designs. With a long, low, flat horsepower curve
and lots of torque, also over a pretty
wide range, three speeds were fine.
With their simple valve gear, the flat heads could stand ridiculous amounts of
over revving. One summer day, I was out
driving my friends around the hills. High spirits and a modest amount of
alcohol may have been involved. In any case, I
later concluded that while I had been bombing around way too fast for that car
and those roads, I may well have stayed
in second gear when I should have been in third - for some time.
The next day, mom had trouble with the car, couldn't get it to go into third
reliably. When the mechanic pulled the
trannie to check it out, he said all the parts just fell out on the floor.
Oops. But the engine was just fine - until
mom rear ended somebody. She then moved up to a '53 Dodge, with basically the
same engine and transmission setup, flat
head six, three speed column shift.
The Peugeot 604 I had for a while reminded me of the old straight sixes, with a
very modest horsepower rating (105?
115?) in a big, heavy car. And yet it flew up the fairly long, steep hill I
live on rather effortlessly without shifting
down compared to the smaller, lighter, higher horsepower Audi 5000CS Turbo
Quattro that briefly overlapped with it in my
ownership. Out on the freeway, the 604 also easily maintained 75 mph over hill
and dale while towing a boat loaded with
holiday equipment. (The 911 really flew up the hill, but that's a different
story. And it was no good for a trailer.)
Moose
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