Have you ever tried to ride a bike up a mountain? It’s next to impossible if you don’t use the right gear to help you climb. When it comes to vehicle’s gears, pretty much the same is true, the gears are the difference between you driving down the road with a smile on your face, or struggling to get your car, truck, or SUV to move how you want. Your transmission is one of the most critical components in your vehicle, and whether you have manual or automatic, the gears within the transmission play a vital role in allowing you to increase speed, force, and change direction. Let’s review further.
What is a Transmission?
In case you need a refresher on what your vehicle’s transmission is, we have got you covered. As mentioned, a car’s transmission is one of the most critical components of a vehicle. It’s what moves the power from the engine to the wheels, which in turn, rotates the wheels. To keep it simple, your transmission is what makes your wheels move and enables the gear ratio between the drive wheels and engine to adjust as the car slows down and speeds up.
There are different types of car transmissions: automatic and manual. The exact way your transmission works is based on the on the type of transmission. The transmission uses gears to provide power and ultimately make your vehicle move or stop how you intend it to.
What are Your Vehicle’s Gears?
Unless you are a car enthusiast or mechanic, you likely have never really given much thought to the gears in your vehicle; however, every time we drive, we are working with the gears, maybe without even knowing it.
In an automatic transmission car, there is a lever on the steering wheel, the center console, or somewhere else where you select which gear to place your vehicle in. These selections usually include: Drive (D), Reverse (R), and Park (P), but there are sometimes other options like Neutral (N) and more. Once you have made the selection, your car, truck, or SUV automatically knows how to operate and relays that information to the rest of your vehicle, including the transmission.
In manual transmission vehicles, you select the gear using a stick shift and the clutch. A clutch is a mechanical device that engages and disengages power transmission in your vehicle. The clutch acts as a mechanical linkage between the engine and transmission; and briefly disconnects, or separates the engine from the transmission system; therefore, the drive wheels, whenever the pedal is depressed, allowing the driver to smoothly change gears.
Can Issues with my Gears Cause Problems for my Vehicle?
We are not trying to make you an expert on vehicle gears (leave that up to us), if we were, we could go on and on about how they work. We wanted to give you a general idea of what these critical vehicle components are, so you can be aware of how important they are to you keeping your car on the road. If there are issues with your vehicle’s gears, it will impact your entire driving experience and could create major problems for your transmission and overall vehicle.
If your vehicle is having problems changing gears, has a burning smell, new strange noises, is slipping gears, leaking fluid, grinding or shaking, the check engine light is on, or more, there may be issues with your gears that are wreaking havoc on your entire car, truck, or SUV. These are all signs that you should call a Phoenix transmission repair shop right away.
Problems with your vehicle’s gears won’t end there and could create much larger issues for you and your vehicle. At Advanced Transmissions & Emissions we can help. Advanced Transmissions & Emissions aims to make transmission repair services more accessible and cheaper for our customers. Transmissions are expensive and vital components in any vehicle. A failing transmission or gears is never a good thing.
Transmissions are complicated; however, we understand them better than most. Our expertise allows us to locate the source of the problem to make only the needed repairs. That’s how we save our customers so much money. Visit our Phoenix, AZ shop for transmission repair.