In some of the latest cars out there, you can shift gears simply by pressing a button, turning a knob or toggling a small joystick. Yet at the same time, plenty of different automobiles still require motorists to make use of one foot for the clutch pedal and another for the gas, all when using one hand to control the gear-change lever through a distinct design of positions. And many other current cars don’t have any traditional gears at all in their transmissions.

But whether or not a vehicle has a fancy automatic, an old-college manual or a modern-day constantly variable tranny (CVT), each unit must do the same work: help transmit the engine’s result to the driving wheels. It’s a complex task that we’ll make an effort to make a little simpler today, you start with the basics about why a transmission is needed to begin with.
Let’s actually start with the typical internal combustion engine. As the Variable Speed Transmission fuel-air combination ignites in the cylinders, the pistons start upgrading and down, and that movement is utilized to spin the car’s crankshaft. When the driver presses on the gas pedal, there’s more fuel to burn in the cylinders and the whole process moves faster and faster.

What the transmission does is change the ratio between how fast the engine is spinning and how fast the driving wheels are moving. A lower gear means optimum overall performance with the wheels moving slower than the engine, while with an increased gear, optimum performance includes the wheels moving quicker.
With a manual transmission, gear shifting is handled by the driver with a gear selector. Many of today’s vehicles possess five or six forwards gears, but you’ll find older models with from three to six ahead gears offered.

A clutch is used to transmit torque from a car’s engine to its manual tranny. The various gears in a manual transmission allow the car to travel at different speeds. Bigger gears offer lots of torque but lower speeds, while smaller gears deliver less torque and allow the car travel more quickly.