Re: American's and stick shifts

["Mike Green" <mikegreen@gulf.net>]

We must remember - The Ferrari 355 F1 (the car we are all referring to with
the paddle shifters) has a GEARED tranny, a REAL MANUAL tranny.. Not some
slushbox (with belts instead of gears) with a solenoid to put it from "Low"
to "Inter" to "Drive" basically..
The F1 uses plungers to actually depress a clutch, and then moves solenoids
to get it into a gear.  That is why it can shift so fast...I think the time
when the engine is not moving a gear (i.e. time when it is "shifting") is
like .07 of a second..

Mike Green
mikegreen@gulf.net

-----Original Message-----
From: Marc_Nguyen@mail.amsinc.com <Marc_Nguyen@mail.amsinc.com>
To: quattro@coimbra.ans.net <quattro@coimbra.ans.net>
Date: Wednesday, August 19, 1998 8:39 PM
Subject: Re: American's and stick shifts


>Mike Veglia wrote:
>
>> I can see F1 technology eventualy filtering down to the street car level.
>The
>> tiptronic is a step in the right direction but until they go to an
>electonic
>> clutch/gear selecter it is still a slushbox. I believe Ferrari has put
>the F1
>> gearbox into a (supercar) street car haven't they? Of course those paddle
>> switches would still be "in the way" of more important things than paying
>> attention to driving such as cel phones, make up and big macs ;-)
>
>Recent issue of R&T compared a bunch of high-end sports cars/sports
>coupes/whatever you want to call them (i.e. 911, Viper, 'Vette, Z-Roadster,
>etc).  Anyway, a paddle shifter F355/F1 was one of the cars and there was
>an interesting little graph that compared the shift times of a standard
>stick-shift 355 and a paddle-shift 355.  The paddle-shifter was
>considerably quicker.  I still prefer to row my own gears with clutch
>pedal, but I thought the comparison was interesting.
>
>Marc N.
>'93 S4
>'85 urq
>