Originally Posted by
Ambraciot
How does a manual work in the age of CVT? Are you guys constantly twisting dials or something?
Yeah--last time I was car shopping I found a CVT car. All my objections with automatic transmissions are gone, I see no reason to go back.
If you mean mechanically--you have a third pedal that disconnects the engine from the transmission. When that pedal is pressed you can move the gearshift. The gearshift movement is also more complex--the usual form is an H shape, if you have more than three gears it's more like HH, or in heavy vehicles you might have even more slots you can move into.
The driver presses the pedal, sets the shift lever to the desired position and releases the pedal. The driver must be aware of the engine speed and shift as needed. It takes practice because it must be done with reasonable speed if you want to avoid holding up traffic, but you have to be aware of what is going to happen as the pedal comes up--at the point the pedal is up the engine speed
will be set to the transmission speed. If that's too slow the engine stops.
To do this smoothly and quickly requires reducing it to muscle memory--which will take a bit of retraining when you're in a different car, but the basic pattern is the same and you quickly adapt.