Ride report

On Sat, 20 Aug 2016 20:30:36 +0100, NY wrote:

"James Wilkinson" wrote in message
news
What on earth could anyone have against an automatic?

They tend to change gear at the wrong time when I'm not expecting - in
particular when in a manual car I'd stay in third gear on the approach to a
roundabout and floor the accelerator while staying in third rather than
having the transmission engage second half-way round and get a sudden extra
burst of power. Knowing this foible, you very gingerly increase the power to
accelerate away, and go from sluggish in third to kick-in-the-back in second
without any control of the transition between the two.

Never happened to me. I find that the pressure on the accelerator is always proportional to the speed. If I want to go round the roundabout with not much acceleration, I'd not floor it.

In a manual, unless someone's in my way, I always traverse roundabouts in 2nd, so I can get off them faster at my exit.

I also find it much harder to set off from rest smoothly in an automatic:
you gradually increase the throttle pressure and at some point the gearbox
engages and the car surges forwards, whereas in a manual you get the
fine-tuning of being able to let the clutch in gradually.

I don't think they've made them like that for decades. They now have something called a torque convertor. 0-40mph is completely smooth, you don't feel gear changes at all. In fact if you watch the rev counter it stays quite constant.

Finally, it's virtually impossible to change down smoothly if you manually
select L as you are about to go down a steep hill where engine braking is
needed - again down to the lack of manual control of the clutch and the fact
that you are selecting a lower gear than you might select in a manual.

Eh? L? What's that about? I select a number from 1 to 3, depending how much braking I want.

I've never driven a DSG automated manual car (I'd like to try it) but that
would probably suit me better, when used in manual mode - let me decide
*when* to change gear but let the gearbox handle the mechanics of changing
gear smoothly without me having to match engine speed to new gear.

Synchromesh does that anyway.

But I'd have to be very lazy not to want to do all that myself anyway ;-)

Why do something yourself which is easily done by a computer?

--
A woman was standing at the edge of a cliff trying to get the nerve to jump off.
A homeless drunk stopped and mumbled, "If you're about to kill yourself, how about a shag before you go?"
The woman was angry and said, "No! **** off you filthy old *******!"
The tramp turned to leave and said, "No problem, I'll just go and wait at the bottom then."