[rescue] Trannies (was jobops in Austin and Dallas)

[Sheldon T. Hall]

In Message: 6 "Kurt Huhn" <kurt at k-huhn.com> said, more or less...

> I've found that the true racing auto's (which really aren't auto) are more
> standard than auto.  I mounted an air shifter on a friend's custom H-D
> Sportster, and basically all it does is quickly disengage and engage the
> clutch as the gears are shifted.

Renault did that on the Dauphine in the very early 1960s, IIRC.  Hydraulic,
not air, but the same idea: make an "auto" people want out of a standard
tranny you already have.

I hear that Honda cars did this, too, though I've never seen one.

> In sequential transmissions, like you see
> in on motorcycles and touring-car-racers (think speedvision series,
> Australian super-touring) it's very easy to rig either air or solenoid
> actuated clutches.
>
> Gated transmissions, or those of the type you normally find in production
> autos, are not easily adapted.

Heh, talk to Citroen.  As usual, they did it "another way."  In their case,
moving the gear-change lever also actuated the clutch.  Being Citroen, it
was all hydraulic, of course.

Old-style US transmissions, the ones with external shifter forks, are very
amenable to conversion to sequential shifting, there were kits to do that in
the 1960s.  All it takes is a fancy slot-cam and a way to move it.

-Shel