In a few of the most recent cars out there, you can change gears simply by pressing a button, turning a knob or toggling a small joystick. Yet simultaneously, plenty of different automobiles still require motorists to make use of one foot for the clutch pedal and another for the gas, all when using one hand to control the gear-shift lever through a definite pattern of positions. And many other current vehicles don’t possess any traditional gears at all in their transmissions.

But regardless of whether a vehicle includes a fancy automatic, an old-school manual or a modern-day consistently variable tranny (CVT), each unit has to do the same job: help transmit the engine’s result to the driving wheels. It’s a complex task that we’ll make an effort to make a little simpler today, starting with the basics about why a transmission is needed to begin with.
Let’s actually begin with the normal internal combustion engine. As the fuel-air mix ignites in the cylinders, the pistons begin moving up and down, and that motion is used to spin the car’s crankshaft. When the driver presses on the gas pedal, there’s more fuel to burn in the cylinders and the complete process moves faster and faster.

What the transmission does is change the ratio between how fast the engine is spinning and how fast the driving wheels are moving. A lower gear means optimum performance with the wheels moving slower compared to the engine, while with a higher gear, optimum performance includes the wheels moving faster.
With a manual transmission, gear shifting is handled by the driver with a gear selector. A lot of today’s vehicles have got five or six forwards gears, but you’ll find older models with anywhere from three to six forward gears offered.

A clutch is used to transmit torque from a car’s engine to its manual tranny. The various gears in a manual tranny allow the car to visit at different speeds. Variable Speed Transmission Larger gears offer lots of torque but lower speeds, while smaller sized gears deliver much less torque and invite the car travel quicker.