<VV> Re: Driving without a clutch

[Dr. James Waddell]

>In a message dated 5/1/2006 8:30:43 AM Eastern Daylight Time, pp2 at 6007.us
>writes:
>
> > Shifting without a clutch is something you just have to learn. To shift
> > from any gear to neutral, let mostly off the gas so the car is neither
> > accellerating nor decelerating and pull back to neutral. To shift up, take
> > your foot off the gas and let the engine slow. At the right speed it will
> > just slip into gear. Once all the way in, accellerate. The 
> learning process
> > will be noisy.
> >
>Nice instructions - it's not difficult.

Back in my youth (in the UK where automatic transmissions
did not exist!) my summer job was driving delivery vans.
If it had a cable anywhere, it broke! You learned to drive
it back to the shop any way you could. I thought a broken
throttle return spring was a lot tougher to drive. You have
to hook your toe around the gas pedal and pull it back while
pushing in the clutch at the same time! If you don't get it back
fast enough, a screaming engine can scare pedestrians :-)

Since those days I have retrieved two Volvos and an Opel
without a clutch. I even rode a Greyhound bus from somewhere
in New Jersey to Philadelphia after the clutch quit. The
driver was very good at timing the traffic lights. His only
problem was that he stopped short of his stall in Philly.
He just strangled the diesel engine and walked it forward
with the starter. The eyebrows of the dispatcher went up!

'65 vert.


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