"matthewklein220" (matthewklein220)
06/29/2014 at 23:42 • Filed to: None
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"matthewklein220" (matthewklein220)
06/29/2014 at 23:42 • Filed to: None | 0
| 5 |
I was reading about the Chaparral 2E (since it's such a fun car to wreck the hopes of all the GT2 drivers in hopper lobbies), and I found out something interesting about the transmission. I've known the Jim Hall and his crew ran "automatics", what I didn't know is that they, in simple terms, swapped a torque converter in place of the clutch on a 3-speed manual transaxle. This is where I need help, I want to know more about this, but tireless searching of google has turned up nothing. Anyone know a place where I could find out more about this clutchless-manual?
quarterlifecrisis
> matthewklein220
06/29/2014 at 23:59 |
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They had torque converters, and had automatic transmissions - or in this case transaxles. You can't just slap a TC in front of a manual, and then suddenly make an automatic. Not knowing your background, I may sound way too elementary here, but, the way an automatic trans and a manual work are 2 very different ways, and the layout of the gears is incredibly different. So, simply put, automatic with a TC, no clutchless manual.
DrJohannVegas
> matthewklein220
06/30/2014 at 00:00 |
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So, a little reading and a little foggy memory suggests that the Chaparrals used the same transmissions as the early CERV vehicles. I would think that it's either related to the Corvair transaxle or the Halibrand two-speed transaxle. Or, it could be Powerglide derived...
Either way, the funky thing about using a torque converter directly on a traditional manual is that the inertia of the converter is quite high. I suspect that what is really going on is a manually-shifted automatic transaxle. That's at least what I thought was the case for years.
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matthewklein220
> quarterlifecrisis
06/30/2014 at 00:08 |
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See, I thought the same thing, it seems pretty unlikely although I thought it may result in something similar to an automatic with a manual valvebody. But from what I've read it was derived from the transaxles used in Corvairs (like DrJohannVegas said). But another article I found since writing this has a direct quote from Hall "It was just a dog-clutch gearbox with a torque convertor in front of it. You just backed-off the throttle and shifted it." So I guess the torque converter was just for stopping/starting.
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matthewklein220
> DrJohannVegas
06/30/2014 at 00:10 |
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That makes sense, I read they at one point had the car set up using a transaxle like the one in the Corvair with a torque converter on it.
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matthewklein220
> quarterlifecrisis
06/30/2014 at 00:38 |
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What do you make of this? Is semi-automatic just a manual valve-body auto?
The four-wheel drive system is equally unconventional. An 11-inch Powerglide torque converter and clutchless two-speed manual gearbox hang from the rear of the car. A driveshaft from where a harmonic balancer would normally be extends to a second 10-inch Powerglide torque converter at the front of the car, with a second semi-automatic transmission. Over the course of hundreds of subsequent skidpad laps through the sixties, Chevrolet tried numerous torque split ratios and gears, with Duntov aiming for 35% of the power delivered to the front end at low speed and 40% at high speed. Much of this technology is related to the automatic transmission that soon appeared in Jim Hall's Chaparrals via the Chevrolet GSIIa and GSIIb prototypes,