Re: Audi's CVT

["Andrew Buc" <abuc@ibm.net>]

On Sat, 18 Dec 1999 18:00:06 -0600, Michael Theuri wrote:

>The new toroidal concept uses rollers that ride btwn two discs shaped
>such that when the rollers tilt the gear ratio changes

A few years ago _Car_ magazine had a piece on an Austin of the late
'30s that had something similar. As I recall (and that's not saying
much!), the driving disks were flat, and the driven disks moved in and
out radially over the driving disks. Austin wasn't able to make the
components precisely enough, they built only a few hundred cars with
this transmission, and so many customers were unhappy that Austin
replaced their transmissions with their conventional stick shift of the
time. The occasion for the _Car_ article was that someone had restored
one of the cars and, with modern techniques, gotten the transmission to
work as intended.