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Being a salesman, I spend the majority of my day driving from one appointment and business premise, to another. Last year I leased a Ford Freestyle SUV/Station Wagon/Van. (Definitely a car with an identity crisis) It has taken me almost a year to figure out why I get a mysterious deja vu while driving it. Here is the answer: CVT

The Continuously Variable Transmission feels eeriely like the old turbine, stepless transmissions of the 1950's and 60's GM Buick and Chevrolets. Those of you who are old enough to remember Buick Dynaflow and Chevrolet Turboglide will know exactly what I mean. They were the original CVT transmissions. Like those vehicles, my Freestyle is a bit sluggish from a standing start, but has adequate power otherwise. Its feel does bring back the ghosts of 1950's technology. Now I'm scared, and am going to bed leaving the lights on.
 
No relation....

Mechanically speaking, the CVT has nothing in common with the Dynaflow. Those old GM transmissions were basically ordinary automatics, that were designed to "slip" even more than a normal torque converter, in the interest of smoothness, at the cost of efficiency and performance. Detroit at its best.

CVT's are almost the opposite. They're built to maximize the operation of the engine at its most efficient RPM range. Not surprisingly, every hybrid vehicle uses one instead of an ordinary automatic.

The power delivery is actually much better than an ordinary automatic, but you don't get the "clues" that an ordinary automatic gives you. Because of the close matching of gear ratio to RPM, it's hard to redline the engine. Nor do you get that "kick" like when an automatic shifts. The engine is actually at it's peak power delivery, but you don't get that feeling.

When they first came out, (in Subarus) they had a number of reliability problems. Supposedly they've been fixed over the last 20 years.
 
The engine's RPM's DO change when using a CVT. Ask Helen about when I floored the Prius hehe. WWEEEEEEE!!!!!! Sounded like an angry moped. Didn't really go anywhere, just made alot of noise.

The Prius isn't totally smooth when accelerating. When the ICE kicks in, there's a slight but noticeable surge in power.

What's freaky is when you stop at a red light and you feel and hear the engine cut off. "Damn foreign cars"
 
63 Buick

My folks had a 63 Buick Wildcat. It was the car I took my driving test in. It had dual exhaust, a 400 something engine with 4 barrel carb. It was a marauder.

If I recall, it had something called a twin turbine transmission. You never felt a shift.

If you floored it it wauld haul.

I used to peg the speedometer almost every night after work, on the country roads, coming home.

It's a wonder I didn't kill somebody.

It was rock solid and never needed any repairs. It was traded for 69 Bonneville.

I really liked the smooth transmission of the CVT concept. I really grow weary of the Lincoln trannys, I drive. The overdrive that requires throttle pressure and then a slight hesitation before it downshifts and takes off.

I have an 84 Olds Delta Royale and I like the skinny steering wheel and three speed automatic transmission.

My son pried the s off so it now says Old Mobile.

Kelly
 
rinso

rinso

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Howdy portendere, thanks for the response. Yes, I am aware that todays' CVT's have nothing mechanically in common with those old, power-sapping, torque converter transmissions. I'm amazed that they worked as well as they did.

The CVTs are much superior and I'd like to see them used in more applications. However, I still maintain that, to me, in normal stop and go driving, they "feel" much the same. No whine and jerk, just a smooth delivery of power, and it is the smoothness to which I was referring. My first car was a Chevrolet Impala with a Turboglide triple turbine transmission. Nice sexy car, smooth transmission, and not an ounce of practicality built in. Ah yes, those were the days.
 
The sign of old age

Everyone I knew that bought an Oldsmobile was OLD, so that's what I called them. OLD Mobiles.

Not to mention those slow moving Delta 88's had HUGE engines in them. My uncle gave me his 1975 Delta 88 and when *I* tested it, it shot off like a rocket. I gave it to a cousin who needed a car because it drank gas like crazy.
 
The automatic transmission was something many of the European, and especially Japanese car manufacturers had a hard time developing when they came into the United States. A good automatic transission is crucial to success when selling cars in the USA.

The problem was that the tiny engines, many under 80 HP did not have the horsepower and torque to loose in one of those slipping type transmissions like a dynaglide or turboglide. Honda's first attempt at this was the "hondamatic". One of my friends had this in a '77 Civic similiar to the '78 I had. It had a clutch on it like a traditional manual that you had to push when the car came to a stop, instead of a torque converter Once moving however, the transmission would shift by itself like a traditional automatic. It did however shift very abruptly, and one could feel the engine speed very noticably.

Automatic transmissions in Japanese cars used to have reliablity problems, and were to be avoided. It wasn't till the mid-80's when they got enough Horsepower under the hood, and spent a little more time in the design stage, that the Japanese cars had a formidable automatic that was as good as what the Americans were producing. They did catch the US industry off-guard though. The Japanese develeoped transverse automatice (for front-drive vehicles) that now go above and beyond the performance of the American transverse designs!

My SAAB has a 5-speed manual transmission, and had an automatic avaliable. Automatic versions of these cars loose as much as $1000 in resale value. It's a clunky little 3-speed borg-warner. Many automatic owners complain that the cars lack power and suck gasoline like it's an SUV. I've heard many of the BMW's from the same vintage have the same issues.
 
Early 70s Beetles

The early 70s Bugs had an automatic clutch. You shifted gears but you didn't need to use the clutch. It was very jerky and abrupt from what I remember. You started the car in neutral, then when you shifted into 1st the car would jerk forward and the wheels might spin a little.
 
My mom had a 1985 Nissa Sentra (tiny car) with an automatic transmission. It was sllooowwwwwwwwww. About as slow as a non-turbo diesel Mercedes (we had one of those too). My mom had a thing for slow cars I guess.
 
The CVT is actually a Dutch invention. It's a much improved version of the Variomatic transmission that was introduced in the Dutch DAF (van Doorne's AutomobielFabriek). The first model was the DAF 600 that was introduced in 1959 (a very good year LOL). Here's a picture of it. The link goes to the History of the CVT in Wikipedia.

en.wikipedia.org

Continuously variable transmission - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

6-1-2006-12-44-7--foraloysius.jpg
 
I know I have the Consumer Reports review of the DAF, but I'm not sure if I'm remembering a detail correctly. Didn't the DAF use rubber belts on the transmission?

veg
 
Yes, the DAF had indeed rubber belts. Here's a picture of the Variomatic transmission. It's a huge transmission, in the DAF's it was placed under the back seat. As a matter of fact the back seat was raised in order to create the space for it.

In the beginning the rubber belts broke easily and sometimes if there was no belt available they just used a nylon stocking! LOL

6-1-2006-16-18-41--foraloysius.jpg
 
Computer Brain

Jason,
Is there anything you don't know.
Your posts are always funny, but ma alive, you just take off on any subject and all at once you are the instructor.
Kelly
 
Anyone remember the Rupp mini-bike from the 60s? It had sort of a CVT, they called it a torque-converter, but it was really more of a CVT with a belt. It had a split pulley and the belt would ride high or low on the pulley to change the ratio.

As for low horsepower and automatics, my '65 Rambler American
with the 90hp flathead has plenty of pep with it'w Borg/Warner 3 speed automatic. It's not fast, but it's peppy.

Ken D.
 

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