Wednesday, Mar 05, 2008 at 18:13
Hi Kiwi
I was wondering if somebody would make me work for my supper over this post.
About the wheel placement, it goes like this , the manual has a fixed connection to the engine whereas the auto has a spongy one simply because of its fuild coupling.
The more you are into 4wding as opposed to touring the more the auto has to change up/down over a wider rev range and hence the percentage of slippage goes up.
Its a bit like the downhill engine braking thing, the auto's engine has a lesser and spongier (is there such a word)
connection to the wheels and simply does not haul up the cars monentum as quickly, so often one has to touch the brakes a little as wheel.
The effect of this is to slower the response time and hence the car tends to go a little wider etc around corners, and stop just that little bit later.
Thats the theory - for a practical
test I drove two Patrols one immediately after the other thru the river flat section of Victoria's Bull town spur track.
Here the 22 river crossings, some with sharp entry exit points re-inforced the points above.
Its reasonable to ask "how big is this effect " and its not big and can be accomodated for but for me it was only a couple of hundred mm here and there which really just scrapped the bark off a couple of trees.
The second point of
mine you did not like was in relation to a flatter torque curve not causing traction breaking torque spikes.
This point I thought would not be challenged as a wide flat torque curve is the ideal of a 4wd engine and its hard to argue that the auto's change of gear does not cause torque spikes, albiet mellow enough with modern boxes.
A manual gear change is worse however this is really where the manual shines as you have the choice to do this or not in cars with adequate engines.
When you say that the "Auto accelerates faster in loose sand" -
Well I accept this and I think it supports my case
as its the extra drag of the sand that loads the engine and reduces the effect of the autos torque spikes that
actually allows this to occur without early breaking of traction.
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