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Tech Question
Sam Doh, Auckland, New Zealand, 1970 Chrysler Valiant 245
Love your show, E-booger. This is less of a tech Q but more out of curiosity. I'm interested in this Clutchflite business, I understand the basic working principles of the beast but from what I've been reading on the net, these things shift real hard - what's the deal with that? Is this because of lack of soft coupling between the engine and the tranny that is the torque converter? With a manual valve body conversion, is this comparable to a true manual transmission? Realistically speaking, is it streetable? Cheers, Sam
Sam, yes, with the hydraulic coupling gone, there's not much to cushion the shifts. I don't consider it streetable - stuff breaks awfully often. My guess is that this is what kept it from becoming popular, plus, with the torque converter's 2.2:1 multiplication factor gone, you lose the hole-shot advantage that has always been the purvue of automatics. So about the only plus is maybe 1-2 MPH of trap speed.
When you say "comparable to a manual", the question gets sorta muddy. First of all, there's only three speeds. But, like today's OEM manu-matics, you'd be able to shift at will w/o clutching. You could probably shift to neutral as reduce speed to avoid declutching then, but you'd need to declutch before selecting "1". The whole experience is very different from any true manual I have ever driven.
Rick
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