There are two kinds of people in the world—those who like automatic transmissions and those who think that their arrival marked the death of the American automobile. The automatic transmission was originally introduced as a luxury convenience, but it has grown to become the standard of the consumer automotive industry. It is an alternative to the manual transmission that has proven to be quite useful for many driving applications.
How Automatic Transmissions Work
A car engine operates in a fairly narrow range of speeds, but the car itself is expected to cover a much wider range of speeds. The transmission is the go-between that regulates how much power goes to the axles to turn the wheels. A complicated system of gears called the planetary gear set controls the power that goes to the axles and the speed that results from it. A torque convertor takes the place of a clutch in an automatic transmission and it uses hydraulics to help the transmission to shift between the gears that are available to it. The transmission may use as many as eight forward gears as well as a neutral gear and reverse. The actual machinery contained in automatic transmissions is a complicated, precisely-balanced mass of gears, valves, pumps and bands.
Advantages of Automatic Transmissions
Automatic transmissions were created to make driving easier and they certainly accomplish that goal. First and foremost, they eliminate the need for a manual clutch, which means that a driver does not have to push in the clutch pedal every time they change gears. This also means that there is no risk of stalling out the engine when the clutch is released, which happens frequently with people who aren’t accustomed to driving with a manual transmission.
There is also no manual gear shifting—the transmission automatically shifts to the correct gear for the current speed and acceleration. It is possible to manually shift into a particular gear with an automatic transmission, but the only shifting you are required to do is into park, neutral, reverse or drive. For those who are attached to the control of manual transmissions, but want the simplicity of an automatic, some automatic transmissions actually have a “manual” mode so that the driver can toggle between automatic and manual.
With the complicated nature of automatic transmissions, it doesn’t take much to cause them to malfunction. If you think your transmission may be malfunctioning, contact the transmission experts at Trannyman.net today. You can also find us on Facebook for transmission repair and services.
Trannyman.net
