What exactly do "gears" do for the car.

What exactly do they do for the car. I know this is a dumb question but im just getting into the "how things work" section of cars.

do you understand how a pully system works? Or better yet you know the gears on a 18 speed bike or so? What is the major thing you notice about them? The smaller the gear the easier it is for the engine to work, so you excellerate really quickly, but the less top speed you can get. When you get into the highest speed gear 18th gear, its really big and really hard for you to push down on the peddle, but you can get going really fast on that big gear with little effort, but if you need to accelerate really fast it just doesnt happen. so the car starts out excellerating in first gear, small gear, and as the overall car speed and RPMS get higher it shifts into the next gear, 2nd then the RPMS will drop because the engine is working a little harder, but the overall speed is much higher than it wasin first. This continues on through all the gears. Get it?

You have the right idea, just mixed up on gear sizes. The engine wants to push the larger gear that way it takes more revolutions of the engine to rotate the large transmission gear, similar on a bicycle (first gear is the largest on the back) Then as you shift, the gears get sequentially smaller to get the ratio closer to 1:1, and for fuel efficiency, better than 1:1. So the right idea, just the gears are opposite big gear for increased acceleration, small gear for topend speed.

I would have to agree with Jayson....because he's right.

I would have to agree with Jayson....because he's right.


No he's not.
He failed to be spefic enough, and completely failed to mention which gear is big and which gear is small.



And for the thread starter: http://www.automotiveforums.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=222611