how do you feel about stick shifts with frills

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dakta1420
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how do you feel about stick shifts with frills

Post by dakta1420 »

What I mean by this is the cars where you have to push the shifter down to go in reverse or some cars to go into first. Or the types where they have a collar you pull up on to engage reverse like in the Chevy cruze. Do you have a preference on where reverse is in the H pattern? Anything else that grinds your gears? My focus is a simple 5 speed with absolutely no frills.
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Re: how do you feel about stick shifts with frills

Post by watkins »

A reverse lock-out is not a frill. Its an incredibly basic safety feature. :?
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Re: how do you feel about stick shifts with frills

Post by dakta1420 »

I haven't owned one manual car that had it. If you aren't smart enough to not shove your car in reverse while going down the highway than you need to probably drive a slush box.
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Re: how do you feel about stick shifts with frills

Post by watkins »

Ever drive a JK Wrangler? Reverse is incredibly easy to get into when aiming for 6th.

Still doesnt change the fact that its a basic feature and certainly no fancy shmancy frivolous thing to have a lockout.
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Re: how do you feel about stick shifts with frills

Post by IMBoring25 »

Safety feature is a strong term, but it is there for a reason.

The positive lockouts are most frequently used on six-speeds and up for several reasons...

With a five-speed, you have three gates...One that's sprung to the center, one that's the only gate you can hit pushing the shifter to the left, and one that's the only gate you can hit pushing the shifter to the right. There's far more potential for a mis-shift once you have two gates in the same direction of center, especially since six-speeds are generally more tightly gated.

With a five-speed, you may also have a lockout mechanism you didn't notice. It is common for a mechanism to be installed that doesn't permit a direct shift from fifth to reverse. This keeps someone having gotten out of a six-speed from trying to shift to a non-existent sixth gear most of the time, but if they've accelerated aggressively up to a cruising speed and skip gears into what they think is sixth, some unpleasant noises can be expected. With a traditional six-speed, reverse is in a gate by itself, and this lockout mechanism doesn't work, because you'll always be coming from a different gate.

The push-down and "pop" style lockouts also don't really work unless the protected gear(s?) has its own gate, as the motion is considerably less natural to push down or pop when moving the shifter fore/aft. The only positive lockout I've seen on a non-dogleg five-speed has been the collar style.

Personally, I can adapt to about anything, but the more positive the lockout, the lower the risk of a mistake.

I was expecting"frills" to mean leather and infotainment, or maybe automatic rev-matching...Not a reverse lockout.
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Re: how do you feel about stick shifts with frills

Post by theholycow »

My Buick's T5 has no lockout. R is exactly where 6 would be. If I accidentally tried to shift into 6 at speed it would just grind and I wouldn't succeed. No lockout necessary. I remember almost trying it once, can't remember if I actually went for it until it started to grind or if I aborted before crossing too far past neutral.

Wife's 2003 Sunfire has it in the same position and has an annoying and unneeded collar lockout that is very picky about the order in which you do things. Sometimes I have to abort, return to center, and try again, even though I thought I had it exactly right.

My 2008 VW had it to the left of 1. There, a lockout is more necessary. You're at a dead stop and that transmission has a synchronizer for R so it would feel exactly like shifting to 1 and launching until you rear-ended yourself on the car behind you. The push-down lockout occasionally rewarded sloppy handiwork with unwanted Reverse engagement.

There was a mythbusters episode where they tried it. Mostly they tried with slush but I think they tried with one manual, didn't they? No safety issues resulted, nor even any damage.
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Re: how do you feel about stick shifts with frills

Post by Rope-Pusher »

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First time I "went Amish", it was Stovebolt Six Chevy II column shift / 3-on-the-tree with the "Standard H-Pattern" as shown above. With a clumn shifter, the shift pattern is rotated so that Reverse and 2nd were "UP" along the z-axis of the vehicle and the 2/3 plane was 'Forward" along the x-axis of the vehicle.

You had to consciously push the shift lever forward and upward to make a 1>2 shift. If you wanted to shift from 1 > R, you pulled the lever rearward and upward. There were no "Frills" to keep you from inadvertently shifting into Reverse, but it was not difficult at all to keep out of Reverse when you din't want to go there.

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The first Amish vehicle I owned (When I really learned my Amish ways) had a BorgWarner T50 5-speed MT with the pattern shown above.

Here too there were no "Frills" to keep you from inadvertently shifting into Reverse. My first shift was a 1>5 - I didn't want to snag the Non-Synchronized Reverse gear by mistake, so I overshot the 2/3 gear plane. I didn't know enough then to "Trust the Force" of the centering spring and just push the shift lever to the Neutral plane and let the spring force position it in the 2/3 plane.

Image http://www.hemmings.com/mus/stories/200 ... ure18.html
My GLH Turbo had the A525 transaxle with the above shift pattern. Actually, the word "Push" was next to the "R" - one (or two) had to push the shift lever downward to get past the blocker between the 1/2 and Reverse shift planes. I had some issues with this - when downshifting to 1st in a tight curve, I sometimes applied a downward force and bypassed the Reverse blocker (followed by the Biblical "Wailing and gnashing of teeth". The Reverse blocker was improved somewhat by adding washers to space it further downward, requiring increased downward shift lever motion to get around it. Worked for me.
Because of the gearing and the ample power and torque from the motor, there were some times when I tried to shift to 6th, or maybe it would be better to say "one gear up from the highest gear" - I don't always think of gear range numbers, but rather shift by "feel" and it felt like it often felt like it needed to shift to a gear higher than 5th. Of course, nothing bad happened - it just came out of 5th and the shift lever stopped in the Neutral plane.

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My Neon had a NVG T350 with the shift pattern above. NVG adopted the "Mitsubishi Method" and placed a blocker in the transmission that would not allow shifting directly from 5th to Reverse. In fact, there was a cam that moved the lever to the 4th gear position if you pulled it straight back from 5th, so 5>4 downshifts were no-brainers. You could only shift into Reverse by coming across the Neutral plane and then pulling the lever rearward into Reverse gear position. You could shift from Reverse into 5th, no blocker there, but I can't recall that ever being an issue.

A few years later, I did see some 5-speed shifters, maybe the Ford Focus comes to mind, that utilized the Mitsubishi Method in the transmission AND had a lift ring on the shifter to release a Reverse gear blocker there as well - "Belt AND Suspenders". At the time, I thought that was an overkill, but now I don't think that was such a waste of money to add.

I've also driven 5-speeds with "Crash-through" blockers for the Reverse shift plane - you have to exert an extra high force in the Neutral plane to overcome a detent at the transmission before you can enter the Reverse shift plane. Some cars have these, some trucks have these and not just 5-speeds - 6-speeds too. They are the scum of the Earth. The problem is, the force required to overcome the detent is often too high for 5th-percentile drivers, especially if you are attempting to overcome it without a running start (from the adjacent shift plane, not from the other side of the Neutral plane). When you come across from the 3/4 shift plane and try for a hurried skip-shift, it is all-too-easy to overcome the detent without realizing it and get into the Reverse shift plane unintentionally.
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In my Jeep Liberty, I still sometimes shoot through the Reverse blocker detent when skip-shifting from 4th to 6th. It is a synchronized Reverse, but the synchro capacity is low, sized to only allow clash-less shifting into Reverse while the vehicle is still SLOWLY moving forward or before the clutch disk has coasted down to a complete standstill. I think the reason Ford had "Belt AND suspenders" on the Focus was because 6-speeds were coming into the marketplace, maybe more-so in Europe at first and, just as I happened to try shifting my GHL into 6th, some folks driving 5-speeds tried skip-shifting from 4th to 6th and were rudely awakened by that "Wailing and gnashing of teeth". We saw these mis-shifts into Reverse on 5-speed transaxles, and the damage they caused start to occur more and more often with our proving ground drivers, as the Jeep and Truck Amish transmissions were replaced with 6-speeds - the drivers now had a mixed vehicle test fleet of 5 and 6-speed Amish boxes and weren't keeping in mind what transmission they were driving. Attempting to engage a sliding-idler Reverse gear at highway speeds is detrimental to the life of the reverse gear and any other gear mesh that pieces of Reverse gear happened to come between.

What DOG intended for blocking out unintentional shifting into Reverse is a systems approach - Reverse is positioned on the Right side of the shift pattern AND there is a blocker solenoid that prevents shifting into Reverse UNLESS the vehicle is travelling less than maybe 3 mph. Viper, Challenger and (some) Camaros have variants of the Tremec 6060 6-speed that utilize this design. If this is a "Frill", then bring me a petticoat and call me "Ropene"
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Re: how do you feel about stick shifts with frills

Post by AHTOXA »

A lockout collar is a frill? Come on...

I thought this thread would be about 6 speeds that rev match automatically on downshifts, like the one in the 370z. That's a frill.

This forum has a tendency to be extremely Luddite when it comes to manual transmissions, where lockout collars are call "frills".
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Re: how do you feel about stick shifts with frills

Post by Rope-Pusher »

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Here's a lock-out collar with no frills - bring-your-own-lock even.
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Re: how do you feel about stick shifts with frills

Post by theholycow »

I can certainly understand a failure to bring up the right way to describe the concept and coming up with "frills" in a pinch. No need to take it too seriously.
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Re: how do you feel about stick shifts with frills

Post by dakta1420 »

In very basic. I'm used to regular 4 speeds and 5 speed seems like a lockout thing you have to physically move to engage reverse is just something else to go wrong.
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Re: how do you feel about stick shifts with frills

Post by Squint »

dakta1420 wrote:In very basic. I'm used to regular 4 speeds and 5 speed seems like a lockout thing you have to physically move to engage reverse is just something else to go wrong.
My 5 speed Fiesta doesn't have a lockout, and R is located where 6th would be for most cars. I've only tried to shift into "6th" a couple of times but caught myself before it did anything besides just the hint of a grind.

My Mazda is a 6 speed with R located to the left (and up) of the 6 gears. So it requires a push down lockout to keep from accidentally shifting into R when aiming for 1st. It took a little getting used to, but is wasn't difficult to get acclimated.
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Re: how do you feel about stick shifts with frills

Post by six »

The MS6 six-speed that I had had a push-down lockout because R was next to 1st. My current car, an Acura CL six-speed, doesn't have a positive lockout because R is next to 6th. It is a passive lockout though, you need to go to neutral before going to R, or all you'll do is go to 6th.
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Re: how do you feel about stick shifts with frills

Post by Puchrider »

My BMWs have reverse way to the left and up. I don't like it because my shifter is loose and it shakes my whole center column. The only way to easily select it is to do it fast because it's rather springy. :?
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Re: how do you feel about stick shifts with frills

Post by potownrob »

i thought this thread was going to be about manual cars with luxury features... :?: :? :oops: :evil: :lol:
my first few manuals were your typical (for the 80s and 90s at least) 5 speed with reverse to the right and back, with 5th up and to the right. There was a reverse lock-out on all of these, which is not a frill but a safety mechanism to keep morons from relentlessly going for the imaginary 6th gear. I drove a few manual VWs and these all had the cool 5 speed pattern with reverse under (or to the left of) 1st. I always pictured it as under reverse, due to having to push the shifter down (as in down into the ground) and then going into 1st position. I found this a cool setup, and the having to push down the thing felt fancy to me. My current 6 speed has reverse in the same position as 6th gear, though the shifter shows it to the right of 6th. To me, it feels to be in the same place, but there is a lockout that seems to default to allowing you into reverse (but not 5th or 6th) unless the car is moving and you're shifting from 3rd or 4th, then it will let you into 5th and 6th (I'd have to leave work to go verify all that; think that's all or mostly correct though).

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