Banging gears kart style!

[americancrx]

In a shifter kart, the gears are shifted with a lever mounted right behind the steering wheel. Pull towards it to upshift, push away to downshift.

Why aren't passenger cars like that? Why haven't they always been that way? I can reliably change gear in 50 ms which is a quarter of the time for an H-pattern transmission.

You'd have to have a pattern like R-N-1-N-2-3-4-5-6 and an indicator on the dash.

[americancrx]

A helical gearset could be used but you'd have to have 3 full sets of dogs (and maybe even 6 synchronizers) because you couldn't just slide 3rd and 4th gear back and forth like a motorcycle's. The helical gears would "point" the same way so that a single thrust bearing could be used on each shaft, 1 deepgroove floating bearing and 1 angular contact bearing to take the thrust. Spur gears are a lot louder than helicals, and suffer fatigue failure earlier!

[americancrx]

American column shifters used an H-pattern. They were notably awful, with linkages that had to transmit both twisting and pulling motion around several bends to get to the gearbox, well before modern geometry and materials made that workable.

[americancrx]

Because you need a neutral between any forward gear and any reverse gear, to reduce shift shock and to avoid having someone accidentally lock up the tires with a single move.

[americancrx]

gazza285 said:

Here’s a nice bit of kart helmet camera action, and a pretty good representation of what a proper kart is like. Once you are up to speed it does become difficult to see because of the vibration, unless the track is very flat then those little wheels and zero suspension make for a bumpy ride.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=KFTKT-Ewgxw

This sort of video shows exactly why I'd like this sort of gearbox in a car! Look at how much control you have, and how little you have to interrupt the rest of your driving to change gear.