How To Drive A Motorcar
A Key To The Subtleties Of Motoring

GETTING INTO THIRD GEAR change we declutched, and naturally the engine is slowed down at the same time, and the slight pause in the neutral which is made allows the layshaft (1) to slow down from its 500 r.p.m. to about 126 r.p.m., so that this change up can be made more or less auto- matically and easily. In other words, the actual order of events is such that the natural procedure in practice fits in beautifully with, the theoretical requirements. Therefore we find ourselvas in the second gear with, the constant-mesh gears still in mesb and wheel (i) driving wheel (d) and the clutch is let in and the engine- again accelerated up to 1000 r.p.m. The result is, therefore, that, whilst a is still doing its 1000 r.p.m., b is doing 500 r.p.m., and i the same number of r.p.m. as b, but i only having five-sevenths the number of teeth of the pinion d, it (d) only does five-sevenths of 500 r.p.m., or about 355 r.p.m. Therefore we find the tail- shaft is being driven faster than it was before, and consequently the leverage from the engine to the tail- shaft reduced, but the speed of the car increased. Diagram showing gears in third speed- We now want to get into the third speed. From our previous arguments we look for the next largest gear wheel on the layshaft, which is j, and the next smallest one on the primary shaft (e). It is therefore necessary first of all to move d out of engagement and to bring e into engagement. Consequently it is necessary to operate first the shifting lever (f) and then the other S9