>>Feel free to continue debating, but I saw this same quote
>>elsewhere on the web and it made a lot more sense with the
>>word "sequential" in front of "gearbox".
>>
>>The 997 Porches they use in the Michelin Supercup have new
>>sequential gearboxes that Pastrana was not accustomed to
>>using.
>>
>
>
>Actually, it makes even less sense since every motorcycle I've
>ever ridden has had a sequential gearbox. He must have meant
>it was the first car he had ever driven with a sequential
>gearbox. Or the first time he was shifting one with his
>hand!
>
>-DC
>
If any of these car-boys ever gets to look inside a real car sequential box and a little sweet motorcycle box side by side I think they will #### the bed: same stuff different size.
The first car sequential box I got to peek in was Mike Quaiffes personal rally cross Ford Escort 4x4 prototype and the complaint he had was the same as I always joke : you have to grope around and FIND the gearstick somewhere inside a dark and crashing about car, and then try and figure out some esoteric puzzle just to select a gear. Amazing anybody ever manages to actually get a gear, and no wonder most of the current crop of US so called "Pro" Sububitchy and Mistuburu guys take 1 to 2 seconds to change gears.
Quaiffe was a bike guy and just thought the floor shift junk was silly and slow.
That was at least 14 years ago, shame thast car junk is always 30-35+ years behind bike stuff in sophistication, design and nearly never approaches bike performance.
Oh, and any bike trans going all the way back to the 1956 Triumph I had one can all be shifted quite easily with no clutch, although that is much slower than full throttle clutch shifts. Clutchless shift nearly always call for a blip of the throttle, and full throttle is full throttle, just fan that clutch.
They can be shift so easily because bike trannies have ratios which would be considered "ultra-hyper close" by car standards, no mosterous gaps like in car junk so no need for syncros which are brakes.
And just for the record millions of bikes DID have separate gearboxes all the way up to the late 1960s
Does nobody know anything of what came before them?
John Vanlandingham
Seattle, WA. 98168
janvanvurpa (at) f4 (dot) ca
Vive le Prole-le-ralliat!
Vive Le Groupe F!