tiptronic gearbox

[Gary Furst]

Vauxhall in the new Corsa, Ford with the Fiesta replacement and Mercedes in the Sprinter Van all offer clutchless manual gearboxes. These all use the normal manual gearbox to which they attach two windscreen wiper type motors to operate the shift control rods and clutch actuation. The system is developed by Luk, the trick bit to achieve decent driveability is all the logic for hill sensing (both up and down) etc. The system that I drove in a development car was pretty good allowing a degree of wheelspin on a tight uphill lefthander to keep the engine from bogging down. To a degree it is like the F1 idea of programming the circuit into the gearbox brain. Ultimately, where any of these systems fall down is that they can't predict what lies ahead. If however you were to link these current systems with an image recognition system you could solve these problems. Personally I'll stick with a good manual gearbox anyday.

[Blackbirdman]

I tried out the original Blackbird demonstrator with buttons on the wheel and full power up shift option. It was very impressive but so far I have not fitted anything extra to my car. The full power upshift and associated gear number indicator is a bit of a complex electromechanical system and I am looking at doing an all electronic version based on engine and wheel speed signals. It is possible, I'm told, to get an ignition cut by interrupting the engine speed sensor so allowing a full power upshift.

 

 

Geoff P, I saw your car down at Doug's the other week. Well I assume it's yours as there can't be many 'birds being converted for hand controls. I had a long chat to a bloke at the Slipstream Cadwell in May who was in a wheelchair and had built his own Blackbird powered Styker with hand controls and I gave his contact details to Andy to bounce ideas off. Hope you have a great time on Le Sept, just watch the oil levels sad.gif.

 

Sequential shift, can't beat it cool.gif

 

 

 

 

Is it a bike? Is it a car? No it's Blackbirdman

[Streaky Blue]

what you have just described is a 'fluid clutch' where one can preselect any gear, including reverse!

 

The driver at the time described (I was only 14yrs old) how he'd selected reverse during his driving test when he could see his driving tester preparing for an emergency stop (no seat belts).

 

Can't remember the car, an old Rover or something

[Streaky Blue]

sorry that was in reply to Jonathan G (I'll get the hang of this)