Any 2CV owners on here ?

[Osinjak]

Lol, that would be a bit of squeeze!

[M4cruiser]

I drove a Dyane once ... only once - i just couldn't get used to the gearshift layout. Forwards for 2nd, back for 3rd ... WTF

[Venisonpie]

M4cruiser said:

I drove a Dyane once ... only once - i just couldn't get used to the gearshift layout. Forwards for 2nd, back for 3rd ... WTF

Once you get used to it they're great to use. 2nd to 3rd is lightening fast which it needs to be to maintain momentum.
Best brake feel of any car I've ever driven.

[2xChevrons]

Venisonpie said:

Once you get used to it they're great to use. 2nd to 3rd is lightening fast which it needs to be to maintain momentum.
Best brake feel of any car I've ever driven.

As with all old Citroens, the weirdness has a strange from-first-principles logic to it. The dogleg pattern puts reverse and first opposite each other, so for parking you just need to move the gear lever back and forth. Same for 2nd and 3rd, which are the gears you use most when toddling around the countryside as the 2CV was intended to do; as you say, it allows a straight shift for quick changes to preserve momentum. Fourth is out on its own because - especially on the early examples - you only use it once you're well up to speed on main roads, so you don't need to be changing in and out of it all the time. On the 375/425cc 2CVs it was marked 'S' on the shift pattern diagram rather than '4', and you had to select it by going through 3rd rather than neutral, because it was considered an overdrive ('Supermultiplee') rather than a usable gear - top speed on the 375cc examples was reached in 3rd rather than 4th/S.

The brake feel is because there are no flexible sections in any of the brake lines and no servo (and on the disc-brake ones, mineral oil instead of brake fluid) so the response is instantaneous and fully linear throughout the pedal travel.

[M4cruiser]

2xChevrons said:

Venisonpie said:

Once you get used to it they're great to use. 2nd to 3rd is lightening fast which it needs to be to maintain momentum.
Best brake feel of any car I've ever driven.

As with all old Citroens, the weirdness has a strange from-first-principles logic to it. The dogleg pattern puts reverse and first opposite each other, so for parking you just need to move the gear lever back and forth. Same for 2nd and 3rd, which are the gears you use most when toddling around the countryside as the 2CV was intended to do; as you say, it allows a straight shift for quick changes to preserve momentum. Fourth is out on its own because - especially on the early examples - you only use it once you're well up to speed on main roads, so you don't need to be changing in and out of it all the time. On the 375/425cc 2CVs it was marked 'S' on the shift pattern diagram rather than '4', and you had to select it by going through 3rd rather than neutral, because it was considered an overdrive ('Supermultiplee') rather than a usable gear - top speed on the 375cc examples was reached in 3rd rather than 4th/S.

..

Ok, thank you for the explanations on the gear pattern.
It's still so weird though when everything else I've driven isn't like that.
Gears are a major control, and I don't really like the manufacturers fiddling with them, maybe that's just me, but it takes my attention away from the road.

[FlatTwin]

S is for "surmultipliée", which is "overdrive".
The reason is that Pierre Boulanger didn't want 4 gears because of the rural owners who used to drive 3 gears cars. So the engineers purposed that 3 + 1 gearbox to "reduce fuel consumption while going downhill or at stabilised speed".

The 3trd is a direct drive with 1 ratio, the 4th is overdrive.

That's aslo why up to 1967, you HAVE to pass by the 3trd gear to engage 4th. You can't do neutral-->4th, and it's visible on the diagram.

Like this : https://media.franzose.com/fr/img/det/citroen-2cv-...

And then, when they allowed to do this, the diagram changes : https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/kp251FIqpD...

I've got two ami 6, one from 1964 and one frome 1968. The first one got this old gearbox and the second one the "moderne" gearbox.

Never hab problems to lear the pattern of this gearboxes. The problem I got, is when i drive a Renault 4 which got the same lever but a "classic" pattern. I always whant to start in 2nd...

[FlatTwin]

Some pictures of theses.

1968 Ami 6, this is a car which was purchased new by my familiy back in the time.
https://aws-cf.caradisiac.com/prod/photos/3/7/8/69...
The shadow of the car : https://aws-cf.caradisiac.com/prod/photos/3/7/8/69...
https://aws-cf.caradisiac.com/prod/photos/3/7/8/69...

With my Peugeot 204 : https://aws-cf.caradisiac.com/prod/photos/3/7/8/69...

The blue 1974 ami 8 wagon : //content.invisioncic.com/m304542/monthly_2020_10/large.20201002_163252.jpg.6cbbbcf4c1a2c5ca40be394433feddc7.jpg
Here with the cover you need to put in cold weather : //content.invisioncic.com/m304542/monthly_2020_10/large.20201012_114542.jpg.7360c989a64c10e68cec7dc56e2e10aa.jpg

I really like those cars. There fun to drive, cheap to maintain and very pratical.

[2xChevrons]

M4cruiser said:

Ok, thank you for the explanations on the gear pattern.
It's still so weird though when everything else I've driven isn't like that.
Gears are a major control, and I don't really like the manufacturers fiddling with them, maybe that's just me, but it takes my attention away from the road.

Doing things because "that's the way everyone else does them" was really not how Citroen operated in the good ol' days! Everything was considered on the basis of "what do we want to achieve?" and "what is the most functionally effective way of doing that?" If that means coming up with an unusual gear pattern, suspension made from balls of gas, brakes operated by a button, steering that can move itself without any hands on the wheel or 'fish eye' speedometers, so be it.

Of course in the 2CV's case it was specifically designed for people who had never operated anything more mechanically complex than a bicycle. They had no habits or preconceptions about what a gearchange was or how it worked.

Like most things Citroen, it does take a bit of getting used to but then it becomes joyfully natural to use and you wonder why all cars don't work the same way. When I got my 2CV I did find myself having to actively think about the gearchanges for a few days and then it just became habit and now I can jump between the 2CV and cars with a normal gearchange pattern without a second thought. What I found hardest to master was the third to fourth change (getting enough 'wrist action' on the lever) so for a while I kept getting second gear (fortunately 2CVs have very good synchromesh!) and the poor thing would virtually do a handstand - not to mention about 9000rpm! - when I let the clutch in.

[Bill]

The 2CV is far from unique in having a dog leg gearbox.

If you ignore the numbers the only functional difference is starting off with the gearstick bottom rather than top left.

[M4cruiser]

Bill said:

The 2CV is far from unique in having a dog leg gearbox.

If you ignore the numbers the only functional difference is starting off with the gearstick bottom rather than top left.

Yes, I suppose I would have to think of the gears as 2nd-3rd-4th-5th and pretend that 1st just doesn't work

I have the same mental problem driving a Fiesta 1.0 ecoboost 3-cylinder, where the gear pattern is "conventional" but the way it sounds and behaves isn't. For example 2nd gear sounds like 3rd. Etc.
So I have to think of that gearbox as
2--4--6
3--5
and again there is no 1st. Off topic a bit, sorry.