The US Auto Industry YouTube channel is one of my favorite corners of the Internet. Wonderful old videos populate its pages. This is a vision of the automotive world from decades ago. Some of those videos are educational films that show how a specific part of an automobile works. Spinning Levers is just such a film, and though it was produced in 1936 it’s information is perfectly useful today.
You know how a number of the parts in your vehicle work. Or at least you have a basic understanding of how it all fits together. One of those components is most certainly the transmission. A gearbox is basically just what its name implies; a place that houses a number of gears that allow for your vehicle to operate at a range of speeds. We’re not discussing CVTs or single-speed electric vehicles here. You have multiple gears to get you moving and keep you rising through the wide range of speeds you’ll need on your drive.
Watch the video above and the mystery of the manual gearbox will fade. It’s easy to see how a combination input and output shafts work in concert with a number of different gears to translate engine forces into forward (or reverse) movement.
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