TRANSMISSION SYSTEM:You can't simply connect a set of wheels to the end of the crank because the speed is too

high and too variable, and you'd need to stall the engine every time you wanted to stand still. Instead you need to reduce the revolutions of the crank down to a usable value. This is known as gearing down - the mechanical process of using interlocking gears to reduce the number of revolutions of something that is spinning. .

A quick primer on how gears work

In this case I'm talking about gears meaning 'toothed wheel' as oppose to gears as in 'my car has 5 gears'. A gear (or cog, or sprocket) in its most basic form is a flat circular object that has teeth cut into the edge of it. The most basic type of gear is called a spur gear, and it has straight-cut teeth, where the angle of the teeth is parallel to the axis of the gear. Wider gears and those that are cut for smoother meshing are often cut with the teeth at an angle, and these are called helical gears. Because of the angle of cut, helical gear teeth have a much more gradual engagement with each other, and as such they operate a lot more smoothly and quietly than spur gears. Gearboxes for cars and motorbikes almost always use helical gears because of this. A side effect of helical gears is that if the teeth are cut at the correct angle - 45 degrees - a pair of gears can be meshed together perpendicular to each other. This is a useful method of changing the direction of movement or thrust in a mechanical system. Another method would be to use bevel gears.

The number of teeth cut into the edge of a gear determines its scalar relative to other gears in a mechanical system. For example, if you mesh together a 20-tooth gear and a 10-tooth gear, then drive the 20-tooth gear for one rotation, it will cause the 10-tooth gear to turn twice. Gear ratios

are calculated by divinding the number of teeth on the output gear by the number of teeth on the input gear. So the gear ratio here is output/input, 10/20 = 1/2 = 1:2. Gear ratios are often simplified to represent the number of times the output gear has to turn once. In this example, 1:2 is 0.5:1 - "point five to one". Meaning the input gear has to spin half a revolution to drive the output gear once. This is known as gearing up.

Gearing down is exactly the same only the input gear is now the one with the least number of teeth. In this case, driving the 10-tooth gear as the input gear gives us output/input of 20/10 = 2/1 = 2:1 - "two to one". Meaning the input gear has to spin twice to drive the output gear once.

By meshing many gears together of different sizes, you can create a mechanical system to gear up or gear down the number of rotations very quickly. As a final example, imagine an input gear with 10 teeth, a secondary gear with 20 teeth and a final gear with 30 teeth. From the input gear to the secondary gear, the ratio is 20/10 = 2:1. From the second gear to the final gear, the ratio is 30/20 = 1.5:1. The total gear ratio for this system is (2 * 1.5):1, or 3:1. ie. to turn the output gear once, the input gear has to turn three times. This also neatly shows how you can do the calculation and miss the middle gear ratios ultimately you need the ratio of input to output. In this example, the final output is 30 and the original input is 10. 30/10 = 3/1 = 3:1.

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Making those gears work together to make a gearbox

In the image to the left, I've rendered a close-up of the area between third and fourth gear. When the gearstick is moved to select fourth gear, the selector fork slides backwards. This slides the dog gear backwards on the splined shaft and the dog teeth engage with the teeth on the front of the helical fourth gear. This locks it to the dog gear which itself is locked to the output shaft with the splines. When the clutch is let out and the engine drives the layhshaft, all the gears turn as before but now the second helical gear is locked to the output shaft and voila - fourth gear.

Grinding gears.
In the above example, to engage fourth gear, the dog gear is disengaged from the third helical gear and slides backwards to engage with the fourth helical gear. This is why you need a clutch and it's also the cause of the grinding noise from a gearbox when someone is cocking up their gearchange. The common misconception is that this grinding noise is the teeth of the gears grinding together. It isn't. Rather it's the sound of the teeth on the dog gears skipping across the dog teeth of the helical output gears and not managing to engage properly. This typically happens when the clutch is let out too soon and the gearbox is attempting to engage at the same

time as it's trying to drive. Doesn't work. In older cars, it's the reason you needed to do something called double-clutching.

Synchros, synchro gears and synchromeshes - they're all basically the same thing. A synchro is a device that allows the dog gear to come to a speed matching the helical gear before the dog teeth attempt to engage. In this way, you don't need to 'blip' the throttle and double-clutch to change gears because the synchro does the job of matching the speeds of the various gearbox components for you. To the left is a colour-coded cutaway part of my example gearbox. The green cone-shaped area is the syncho collar. It's attached to the red dog gear and slides with it. As it approaches the helical gear, it makes friction contact with the conical hole. The more contact it makes, the more the speed of the output shaft and free-spinning helical gear are equalised before the teeth engage. If the car is moving, the output shaft is always turning (because ultimately it is connected to the wheels). The layshaft is usuallyconnected to the engine, but it is free-spinning once the clutch has been operated. Because the gears are meshed all the time, the synchro brings the layshaft to the right speed for the dog gear to mesh. This means that the layshaft is now spinning at a different speed to the engine, but that's OK because the clutch gently equalises the speed of the engine and the layshaft, either bringing the engine to the same speed as the layshaft or vice versa depending on engine torque and vehicle speed.

What about reverse?

Reverse gear is normally an extension of everything you've learned above but with one extra gear involved. Typically, there will be three gears that mesh together at one point in the gearbox

instead of the customary two. There will be a gear each on the layshaft and output shaft, but there will be a small gear in between them called the idler gear. The inclusion of this extra mini gear causes the last helical gear on the output shaft to spin in the opposite direction to all the others. The principle of engaging reverse is the same as for any other gear - a dog gear is slid into place with a selector fork. Because the reverse gear is spinning in the opposite direction, when you let the clutch out, the gearbox output shaft spins the other way - in reverse. Simple. The image on the left here shows the same gearbox as above modified to have a reverse gear.

Crash gearboxes or dog boxes.

Having gone through all of that business about synchromeshes, it's worth mentioning what goes on in racing gearboxes. These are also known as crash boxes, or dog boxes, and use straight-cut gears instead of helical gears. Straight-cut gears have less surface area where the gears contact each other, which means less friction, which means less loss of power. That's why people who make racing boxes like to use them. Normally, straight-cut gears are mostly submerged in oil rather than relying on it sloshing around like it does in a normal gearbox. So the extra noise that is generated is reduced to a (pleasing?) whine by the sound-deadening effects of the oil.

Before the gearbox - the clutch

So now you have a basic idea of how gearing works there's a second item in your transmission that you need to understand - the clutch. The clutch is what enables you to change gears, and sit at traffic lights without stopping the engine. You need a clutch because your engine is running all the time which means the crank is spinning all the time. You need someway to disconnect this constantly-spinning crank from the gearbox, both to allow you to stand still as well as to allow you to change gears. The clutch is composed of three basic elements; the flywheel, the pressure plate and the clutch plate(s). The flywheel is attached to the end of the main crank and the clutch plates are attached to the gearbox layshaft using a spline. You'll need to look at my diagrams to understand the next bit because there are some other items involved in the basic operation of a

clutch. (I've rendered the clutch cover in cutaway in the first image so you can the inner components.) So here we go.

In the diagram here, the clutch cover is bolted to the flywheel so it turns with the flywheel. The diaphragm springs are connected to the inside of the clutch cover with a bolt/pivot arrangement that allows them to pivot about the attachment bolt. The ends of the diaphragm springs are hooked under the lip of the pressure plate. So as the engine turns, the flywheel, clutch cover, diaphragm springs and pressure plate are all spinning together. The clutch pedal is connected either mechanically or hydraulically to a fork mechanism which loops around the throw-out bearing. When you press on the clutch, the fork pushes on the throwout bearing and it slides along the layshaft putting pressure on the innermost edges of the diaphragm springs. These in turn pivot on their pivot points against the inside of the clutch cover, pulling the pressure plate away from the back of the clutch plates. This release of pressure allows the clutch plates to disengage from the flywheel. The flywheel keeps spinning on the end of the engine crank but it no longer drives the gearbox because the clutch plates aren't pressed up against it.

Burning your clutch

You might have heard people using the term 'burning your clutch'. This is when you hold the clutch pedal in a position such that the clutch plate is not totally engaged against the back of the flywheel. At this point, the flywheel is spinning and brushing past the friction material which heats it up in much the same was as brake pads heat up when pressed against a spinning brake rotor (see the Brake Bible). Do this for long enough and you'll smell it because you're burning off the friction material. This can also happen unintentionally if you rest your foot on the clutch pedal in the course of normal driving. That slight pressure can be just enough to release the diaphragm spring enough for the clutch to occasionally lose grip and burn.