Die hard Manual guys get in here!

TexasRebel said:

well yeah... when you press the clutch and disconnect all power from the wheels.

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I might recommend conceding any discussion on ice driving to the member from New Jersey when you're from Texas. Just on optics alone.

FranzVonHoffer said:

I might recommend conceding any discussion on ice driving to the member from New Jersey when you're from Texas. Just on optics alone.

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I guess you thought the Red River couldn't be crossed?:shrug:


Remove power from the wheels (both brake and engine) and you have the best chance of maintaining control. It's not magic, it's physics... which I guess some people think is magic.

DrGrabster said:

Coming from the UK where we all learn to drive manuals I'm not afraid to shift the Auto stick. When coming down an iced up hill in an automatic and not wanting any input from the engine to the wheels I simply pop the lever into Neutral. Works a treat.

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LOL your not helping my man's magical manual transmission/ice arguement.

bluebeastsrt said:

You guys are reaching so hard in this thread. It's ridiculous. You'll never wreck one of these automatic cars in bad weather unless your driving like a nitwit. If your mindset is. I need to be in total control in bad weather with the paddles. Instead of just slowing down and using the driver modes provided for you by Ford. You deserve to run your car into a field. Not every trip to the grocery story has to be driven at 9/10th with your hair on fire! It's not automatic transmissions that are causing nitwits to crash in the rain. It's just careless driving.

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I can tell you that an unexpected shift in a corner will startle me every damn time, and out of proportion to its actual effect on tire grip. You can't possibly explain to me how that could ever be a good thing. Under any conditions. Nor can you wish the 'startle effect' away or insult it away by playing the 'ridiculous' card.

Hell, it bothers me just driving in a straight line when an AT shifts either before or after I would in a MT car. Or drops down a gear when I wouldn't, or two when I'd have gone down only one. I really don't want throttle position to have any control over what my car's transmission does; engine and transmission functions are all just fine when kept separate from one another. Under all driving conditions, good, bad, or atrocious. Track (road course) or street.


But I guess I shouldn't expect a die-hard AT guy and a drag-racer to boot to understand any of that. Different mindset entirely, and calling my thoughts ridiculous yet again will only serve to further illustrate this difference.


Norm

TexasRebel said:

I guess you thought the Red River couldn't be crossed?:shrug:

Remove power from the wheels (both brake and engine) and you have the best chance of maintaining control. It's not magic, it's physics... which I guess some people think is magic.

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I'm from South Florida then moved to Texas so I have zero ice experience but I thought once you lost traction on ice you go the last direction you had traction until you either recover traction or hit something. Or is that just black ice? Whatever it is, I say fck living in a climate where the weather can kill you. Board shorts and flip flops FTW.

Norm Peterson said:

I can tell you that an unexpected shift in a corner will startle me every damn time, and out of proportion to its actual effect on tire grip. You can't possibly explain to me how that could ever be a good thing. Under any conditions. Nor can you wish the 'startle effect' away or insult it away by playing the 'ridiculous' card.

Hell, it bothers me just driving in a straight line when an AT shifts either before or after I would in a MT car. Or drops down a gear when I wouldn't, or two when I'd have gone down only one. I really don't want throttle position to have any control over what my car's transmission does; engine and transmission functions are all just fine when kept separate from one another. Under all driving conditions, good, bad, or atrocious. Track (road course) or street.


But I guess I shouldn't expect a die-hard AT guy and a drag-racer to boot to understand any of that. Different mindset entirely, and calling my thoughts ridiculous yet again will only serve to further illustrate this difference.


Norm

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We can argue about this all day. If your going so fast around a bend. That an automatic shift disrupts your vehicle. Your driving to fast for public road safety! There are no statistics that point out that a manual or automatic are any safer than the other. Its all conjecture. That's what I find ridiculous. Around a road course. With today's modern transmissions. You won't be faster in one over the other. ZL1,Zo6 or GTR for example. It remains to be seen what the 10 speed mustang will do. But I'm betting it's going to be quick at the drag strip as well as the road course. My mind set isn't that of a drag racer. It's the mind set of a person that owned about 50%-50% of each type of transmission. Automatics are quicker. Manuals are more fun. I'm not fanatical about either. The only place I prefer one over the other is the drag strip. When people start making points like a manual is better on ice or oil. They've just gotten carried away. Which is always what happens with these transmission threads.

I like my manual transmissions. Mainly because they are fun to drive though I do think they have their advantages in auto-x and road courses. Drag strip of course goes to the auto.

As for accidents, I've had 2 that were my fault. One in an auto and one with a stick. That's it, the verdict is in! The transmissions are both equal opportunity as to when you might have an accident!

In all seriousness though I don't think there is much argument here. I will agree with Beast on this one. Where you have an accident, chances are it's your fault, not the transmissions.

I've had manuals for my "fun cars". Then after driving a few PDK Porsche's I thought, hey maybe auto transmission are the way to go. So when I was looking at the 2014 GT's, the die hard 1/4 mile guys were all like Autos are faster. And I thought my wife would be very happy if I got a Convertible with Auto that she could drive, so I did. And I was never really happy with it. It was fun & fast enough, but Ford's 2013-2014 automatics (only thing I can speak about it) was just not smart enough, and often lagged before kicking in to gear, or downshifting, etc. It was not what I was expecting.

That said, I think Ford has finally caught up with what I was driving and expecting from the PDK's. So when/if I get my next mustang 2018+ it will most likely be a 10-speed auto.

FranzVonHoffer said:

...I thought once you lost traction on ice you go the last direction you had traction until you either recover traction or hit something.

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yep. The best way to recover traction is to let the wheels go as free as possible by removing as many inputs/constraints as you can. Each input is fighting the friction available to the contact patch.

Some constraints cannot be removed. The rear wheels rotate (more or less) within fixed, parallel planes. If you've let the skid go too long/far and the rear is sliding sideways, chances are slim you will regain traction. The vehicle is moving orthogonal to the rotation of the rear wheels.

Some constraints are impractical to remove, steering for instance. In the case of steering, you want to place the rotational plane of the affected wheels parallel to the direction of travel in order to regain traction.

The final two inputs you can remove are the first and second most powerful inputs on your vehicle, brakes and engine respectively. The absolute worst thing a driver can do in a skid is brake. Preventing the wheels from rotating guarantees that traction will not be regained. While it might not be intuitive, the engine puts the same constraints on the wheels as the brakes, modifying the rotation. In a 3-pedal the easiest way to remove any forces exerted on the contact patch by the engine is to disengage the clutch.

DrGrabster does the same thing in his AT by popping it into neutral, but I doubt that can be done as fast as disengaging a clutch. If nothing else because most drivers in automatics do not keep their hand on the gear selector while the left foot is always on the clutch pedal.

DrGrabster said:

Ferrari, Lambo, Rolls Royce, Bentley, McLaren, Bugatti, Koenigsegg don't sell MTs

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Actually most of those companies do: in a dual clutch automated manual. Lets take the cars that you'd want on the road course:

Ferrari
Lambo
McLaren
Koenigsegg

Now how many of these companies will sell you a car with a torque converter?

Don't be one........

Dr. Norts said:

Don't be one........

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That's awesome.

CrazedAntelope said:

Actually most of those companies do: in a dual clutch automated manual. Lets take the cars that you'd want on the road course:

Ferrari
Lambo
McLaren
Koenigsegg

Now how many of these companies will sell you a car with a torque converter?

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Koenigsegg One:1 has a torque converter. The converter acts as the whole transmission because it's direct drive.

Conventional automatic with converter, planetary gears and clutches are faster, lighter and cheaper than dual clutch. Plus with lock-up converters you don't even feel the mushiness at speed.

I still prefer manual. It's just more fun for me. Although very relaxing driving my sedan & truck with auto.

bluebeastsrt said:

We can argue about this all day. If your going so fast around a bend. That an automatic shift disrupts your vehicle.

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The point I'm apparently failing to get across is that automated shifts in a bend disrupt ME, likely long before they would significantly disrupt the car. No matter how fast or slow I might be driving, it's still a momentary 'WTF just happened?' distraction that I - me personally - just don't want to be dealing with in the middle of a corner. In any weather. At 50% AT driving, this probably doesn't even register with you as anything unusual. At my sub-0.1% amount of AT driving it'd stick out like a sore thumb.

You're trying to associate what I've been trying to say with always driving at something like 9/10ths of whatever conditions can support. I'm telling you it's not like that at all, it's that automatic shifts in a bend really do bother me - at or even below the pace of normal traffic under identical conditions. So it's not the transmission per se, it's a matter of the way it works not meshing with the way I think, and that's still a problem. Capiche?


Norm

Drive a modern performance auto. It doesn't shift until you tell it to. Even in auto mode, some cars (like Chevys high performance line) and Ferraris have such good logic that you don't need to shift them manually and they'll keep you in the right optimum gear all of the time.