How Do Car Gearboxes Work?

The car is a complex machine. So many parts working together to get people from one point to another and yet most people do not think of the genius which goes into making their lives easier each day. For example, most people have probably never heard of car gearboxes.

What is a it? In layman terms, it is the part of the transmission in the engine that transfers speed into thrusts that propel the car forward. When one pushes the gas petal, it produces speed in the engine, so the further down one pushes the petal, the faster the engine goes. Well, instead of blowing out the engine, the car gearbox takes that speed, and using shifters and sliding gears converts it into torque or thrusting power. The power slows the energy down so it can push the car with the correct gage in place.

Just like there are two different types of transmission systems, there are two different types of gearboxes. The manual gearbox depends on the driver and the clutch to tell it how much power and speed are being directed into the engine so it can properly shift to the correct gear. It is the easier of the two gearboxes to study and maintain, unfortunately it is also more intensely interactive. The engine and transmission system are depending on the driver to correctly tell it which gear needs to be in place in the gearbox. If the driver has misinterpreted it then the transmission system will crash.

The other is the gearbox for the automatic transmission system. The gearbox is laid out exactly like its manual counterpart with the exception of using pressure fluids within the engine to figure out when the gears need to be changed and thus not relying on the driver for gear shifts.

This process involves having an engine driveshaft and gearbox driveshaft connected to the gearbox itself, transferring the speed in the engine and reading the pressure fluids and transferring it into thrusts in the correct gear needed at any particular time. So the transmission is more complex and harder to maintain, but easier for the driver with less chance of crashing the engine for misreading the transmission.

For a driver, it's amazing that a box made of driveshafts, sliding gears and shifters are what keep his or her car moving forward so he or she may get places a little faster.