The gear change party trick of some Rootes Group (Chrysler UK) test drivers was to change into reverse at 70 mph. They daren't let the clutch up though!
The Chrysler pentastar logo was affectionately referred to as the puckered anus.
A bit of the company history ............ www.rootes-chrysler.co.uk/
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Some interesting reading there L'es i was particularly fond of the Hunter range and found them nice to drive and i liked the simplicity of the overall 3 box shape.
I hated the Horizon and it's like presumably fitted with that dreadful Simca petrol engine which managed to make a mk1 Golf Diesel sound quiet, soft spot for Alpine sports cars though especially the Tigers.
My dad had a Minx and my second car was a Super Minx estate....split tailgate if i recall.
It's quite eerie driving past Ryton, just a desert of broken concrete roads/floors and an odd pile of rubble here and there, Stoke plant Cov being a new 'urban village' (higher price tags and kudos i suppose for those who believe in such estate agent tripe) with their new office/training/service centre occupying a tiny spot in comparison, damned shame.
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...was particularly fond of the Hunter range...
Long stroke 1725cc engine was not particularly fond of high speed cruising.
The advent of motorways did these cars no good at all.
I dragged quite a few back with 'a rod through the side'.
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Hillmans in the 50s and 60s were always rather stodgy and underpowered, and weren't particularly reliable either. The Arrow series (Hunter etc) from the mid-60s onwards were better built but still not a ball of fire.
Yes, the Horizon did have that dreadful Simca engine, as did the Alpine. They were basically Simcas.
I never understood why the Chrysler management decided to throw away the Hillman/Humber/Singer/Sunbeam/Simca brand loyalty and call them all Chryslers, then Talbots. They never recovered, as the cars weren't good enough to make up for it being seen as a new brand (I know Talbot was an old name, but it was too old!).
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I could change into reverse at 70mph (when it got there) with my Wartburg. No need to touch the clutch either because it had a freewheel. But if you touched the throttle - bang.
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A well designed driven plate should partially disintregrate, and shed its friction material when spun up to ridulous speeds in this type of maltrewatment. This protects the rest of the driveline.
So in development testing, a driven plate should survive maximum engine speed and a margin of safety above there, but, should fail before reaching a larger multuple of max engine speed.
I can well imagine Rootes not bothering with this though.
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In the mid 60s I worked in a (non-Roots) lab next to a guy developing an electronic control for an auto box in an Imp. He had a Sunbeam Rapier and on one visit to Coventry for a meeting a fan blade flew off and went through the bonnet. At the end of his meeting he found his car had been repaired.
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In the mid 60s the only electronics were in the radio! I had a Singer Chamois, a posh Imp, and I can't imagine that engine had enough oomph to drive an auto box AND the wheels. :-)
JH
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I had a Chamois and was driving round Liverpool one evening as the battery started to fail - it physically slowed down when I put the headlamps on !
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a fan blade flew off and
>> went through the bonnet.
That happened to my Super Minx about a week after i sold it...well part ex'd it for...wait for it a Morris 1100...you don't need to tell me i needed me bumps read, a pile of carp.
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>> So in development testing, a driven plate should survive maximum engine speed and a margin
>> of safety above there, but, should fail before reaching a larger multuple of max engine
>> speed.
The engine speed at 70 mph in top was 4700 RPM, which was well below the maximum engine speed of 6000 RPM.
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I had a bubble-car, fitted with a single cylinder, two-stroke engine. It had a device called a dynastart, a combined dynamo/starter motor. Two sets of points and a capability of reversing the current to the dynastart meant you started the engine backwards to reverse. Mine didn't have any sort of safety device fitted to prevent the engine running backwards in the upper three gears!
Anybody 'taking the mick' out of my pride and joy would be offered a lift in it.
I once, famously, got up to third, backwards. ;>)
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Never saw it done, but people claimed that with a Daimler or Armstrong-Siddeley preselector gearbox you really could change into reverse on the move (perhaps not when going very fast though) and the car would come to a halt and then start moving backwards.
Does anyone know if that is true?
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I once saw a dramatic ( several revolutions ) spin involving a then newish BMW 635Csi ( remember them ?)
He was sitting at traffic lights at the head of a two lane queue and took off at a huge rate of knots. I'm guessing but I think he must have been manually shifting an auto box to try to gain more acceleration. After about 250yards I think he must have managed to put it in reverse with his foot still planted to the floor.
The result was loud and clearly expensive but quite artistic to watch.
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A work colleague reckoned the 'park' detent dropped in on his Chrysler 180 at 40MPH, producing similar results to above.
He scrapped it.
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I'd have bricked it never mind scrapped it........
:-)
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>Never saw it done, but people claimed that with a Daimler or Armstrong-Siddeley preselector gearbox you really could change into reverse on the move (perhaps not when going very fast though) and the car would come to a halt and then start moving backwards. <
I believe it. That was real engineering.
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I'm inclined to believe it too. Must have heated the slushpump fluid up a bit though, and put stress on the vanes and thrust bearings... I doubt if it was really recommended.
Those preselectors made special very nice whining noises of their own. There was something really charming about them. I think they became too expensive compared to US three-speeders produced cheap by the million.
Small sadnesses of automotive history.
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>>The engine speed at 70 mph in top was 4700 RPM, which was well below the maximum engine speed of 6000 RPM.
So, if you put in a low gear, like first, or reverse, how fast would the driven plate be spinning? 15,000 rpm? A well designed driven plate would burst at this speed, thus protecting the driveline.
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>> >>The engine speed at 70 mph in top was 4700 RPM, which was well below
>> the maximum engine speed of 6000 RPM.
>>
>> So, if you put in a low gear, like first, or reverse, how fast would
>> the driven plate be spinning? 15,000 rpm? A well designed driven plate would burst at
>> this speed, thus protecting the driveline.
>>
I did say "They daren't let the clutch (pedal) up though!".
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>>I did say "They daren't let the clutch (pedal) up though!".
Yes, absolutely.
But, with a well designed clutch, you could let the pedal up. Nothing would happen, because the driven plate would already have broken and scattered itself around the inside of the bellhousing!
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>> But, with a well designed clutch, you could let the pedal up. Nothing would happen,
>> because the driven plate would already have broken and scattered itself around the inside of
>> the bellhousing!
Perhaps when the clutch was originally designed in the late 1950s or early 1960s, it wasn't (by your standards) well designed. Or perhaps the fact that it was of a small diameter (5.5" in early models) made it inherently capable of sustaining high rotational speeds.
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>> Perhaps when the clutch was originally designed in the late 1950s or early 1960s....
That's entirely possible - it was the mid 90's when I first heard about this (rather interesting?) design case. I don't know when it was introduced.
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The clutch plate is on the gearbox input shaft, so spins at gearbox speed regardless of whether the clutch is connected to the flywheel or not.
If the gearbox is in reverse but the car moving forwards, the gearbox internals and the clutch plate will be spinning backwards.
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Gear change party tricks - -
