959 gelande gear

[MikeO996]

In this month's evo Henry Catchpole is bemused by the 959s lowest gear (marked G), which he discovers is an off road gear "basically a creeper gear, shorter than first".

I think he's wrong and it is just first gear but I can't remember why Porsche did it. I have a feeling that it was to get around some legal or homologation issue but I'm not going searching through piles of books and mags to find out.

Anyone know?

[rog007]

"It was coupled to a unique manual gearbox offering 5 forward speeds plus a "G" off-road gear, as well as reverse."

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porsche_959

[Silent1]

I reckon it's related to group B and in that gear the diffs are locked so it can be driven to the service after a crash/failure.

[FunkySon]

MikeO996 said:

In this month's evo Henry Catchpole is bemused by the 959s lowest gear (marked G), which he discovers is an off road gear "basically a creeper gear, shorter than first".

I think he's wrong and it is just first gear but I can't remember why Porsche did it. I have a feeling that it was to get around some legal or homologation issue but I'm not going searching through piles of books and mags to find out.

Anyone know?

I thought exactly the same when I read the article.

The reference that you are looking for comes from the November 1998 issue of 911 & Porsche World when they did a track test of Charles Ivey's 959.

That article reports that labelling the lowest gear as "G" was a clever trick to get around noise testing which needed to be carried out in 1st gear.



Happy to help.

Duncan

[MikeO996]

You're brilliant, I'm sure that's what I was thinking of, but I couldn't find it anywhere, and I bet I got it from that article.

[mollytherocker]

I am trying to understand how that would reduce the noise for the test? I don't get it.

[FunkySon]

Higher gear equals less revs. Less revs equals less noise. Surely?

[sfl993t4]

If the test was driving away from a microphone on full throttle, in second gear the car would be further away when it reached high revs and so noise registered would likely be less (if the high rev noise was the limiting factor). The G label is an interesting work-around.

Steve