[shakes]

SuziBlu wrote:

Sometimes I wish I could be as eloquent in type as I am in words.

I've got the same problem alot of the time mate.

So your saying anyone riding the brake unnesacerily when the engine can do the work is a dick cause they will fade? If that's the case I'll be suprised if you can find anyone who will argue the point

[SuziBlu]

shakes wrote:

SuziBlu wrote:

Sometimes I wish I could be as eloquent in type as I am in words.

I've got the same problem alot of the time mate.

So your saying anyone riding the brake unnesacerily when the engine can do the work is a dick cause they will fade? If that's the case I'll be suprised if you can find anyone who will argue the point

Sadly, its taken a while, but that was my intention from the outset.

[Gwagensteve]

With no intent of sounding patronising, it might best to stick to discussing the topic to avoid confusion.

It's clear you don't like autos, and that's fine. I'm not sure that your reasons are very robust, but that's fine too - they're good enough for you. It's pretty hard work though to have a vigorous discussion about something only to find out one party is talking about something else entirely though.

Steve.

[banga]

back to the topic i drive a manual vit and think that i would have been better off with a rev and go for wheeling i think it would be good having the ability to crawl and get up it when you need to.

[Gwagensteve]

I'm not 100% sure what you're saying, but I'll make a coupe of points about the auto Vitaras I've played around with.

The 4 Speed auto is great and the power of the EFI 1.6 is pretty good in a SWB, but IMHO they really need transfer gears to make the auto work.

From what I've seen, with some traction (31's and lockers) there's just too much load on the motor to allow it to spin up the wheels and they tend to bog down.

The transfer gear equipped vitaras I've driven were great - punchy and controllable.

Remember that you can't "drop the clutch" in an auto to break the tyres free. You're limited to stalling the car up (which will only get you to 2000rpm or so), and that's not enough from what I've seen to get the car to move quick enough off a standing start for some terrain.

ONe way around this would be a higher stall speed in the auto, but that would likely cost more to sort out than transfer gears, and would have other disadvantages.

The other (desperate) option is to neutral drop, but I don't think that's a good idea on anything you need to get to work in.

In any case, transfer gears are pretty necessary in manuals too, so it's no real surprise they make an equally huge difference to an auto car.

Steve.

[303zuke]

Gwagensteve wrote:

In any case, transfer gears are pretty necessary in manuals too, so it's no real surprise they make an equally huge difference to an auto car.

Steve.

I'll take that to mean that "low reduction gears in the transfer for a Manual too", and that is so in a Sierra because of the relatively high Gearbox and Diff ratios. They would not be quite so necessary if the gearbox and diff ratios were lower. This is the point I was getting to about the 1st gear ratios available in Auto boxes. As an example, one of my other (manual) vehicles has a 6.40 1st gear and 7.16 diffs, and performs superbly off-road with only a 1.87: low range in the transfer. Low transfer gears are not necessary in that case. Another example of a brillant off-road performer is the Haflinger, which has no low range at all, but does have an ultra-low 1st gear.

If Autos came out with lower 1st gears (and with 5 speed Autos becoming more commonplace, why not?) they would find more ready acceptance in the real 4wd world (ie not the "Mum's Taxi" market). It's true that some people have great experiences with Autos off-road, but only after they have done something to take the high gear ratios into account.