Sad News - new V70 not to have manual transmission

Guess I have to move to Audi or BMW.

The new V70 with the 3.2 I6, won't have a manual transmission
available.

Sad - love rowing the gears in the T5 .


If the turning circle of a R was less than a 18-wheeler, I'd buy one
of those =in a heartbeat.


Mat..

 

That is because they have Shiftronic. I have Shiftronic and love it. I
like to leave it in Auto when accelerating and get lightning fast shifts
at redline. Then use Manual when decelerating or descending. The bonus
is that my wife can use it as an Automatic.

That is a trade off with a FWD or AWD vehicle. Most all have atrocious
turning radii. I guess they are for people who know where they are
going and don't go around in circles I have learned to manage my
V70's turning radius and seldom have any problem making U-turns or tight
turns. I just have to think a little more.

 

IMO you lose any real advantage over a standard automatic transmission
and in fact just add still more complexity. I know I'm a snob when it
comes to those things but there's no substitute for a simple manual
gearbox with a clutch, and once you have the complexity and weight of an
automatic there's no point in shifting it manually.

 

Roger that. Why bother if the car can shift without you?


I've had autos and manuals --- and the V70T5M is one of the sweetest
cars I've driven.

Gets 24mpg (combined - commuting) - and hauls when needed. Torque
steer in spades though.

The bigger engine would be nice, but the lack of the 6 speed is takes
the 'sport' out of the wagon.

V70 T5M

 

IMHO you loose the advantage of a stick if you don't shift it. If you
want to reduce weight and complexity take out the heavy engine,
high-pressure turbo, sun roof and leather. Since 80% of the population
don't drive sticks anymore, it adds to the complexity to have a stick
and reduces the resale value. Also, AWD works much better with an
automatic or at least a shiftronic. I like sticks, but I will buy
another.

 

Because automatic transmissions are dumb. They don't know when to down
shift. To me the art of knowing when to down shift is the essence of
being a good driver. If you don't downshift you are going to kill
yourself coming down Pikes Peak and wear out your brakes prematurely.

 

Not true of all autos. My wife's Citroen C2 auto box (selectomatic type
with steering wheel paddles and full throttle red line shifting in manual)
will, when in auto, downshift when it detects that the car is accelerating
and no throttle is being used.

On the hill near us (about 1 in 10 or 10%, I don't know how you merkins
grade slopes), driving in auto mode, if you come over the breast of the
hill at 30mph, the car will shift down, as many gears as required, and keep
the speed down to 32mph at the foot of the hill.

Don't judge all auto boxes by just your experiences, as it obviously misses
out the modern design of gearboxes.

Richard
Web pages: http://www.caravanningnow.co.uk/ for caravanning,
http://www.rcole.org/ for my personal web site and
http://www.homeindorset.co.uk because I love the email address.

 

Huh? The advantage of a stick is lower mechanical losses, lower weight,
generally improved fuel economy, and it's a whole lot more fun to drive.
You can't not shift it so I'm not sure where you're going with that one.
Your suggestions are not realistic, granted I'd gladly take cloth
over leather but that's hardly a savings of weight or complexity. As for
resale value it depends on the car. In general Volvos are harder to find
with manuals and command significantly higher prices on the used market
than those with automatics. Saab 900 is another example, good luck
selling one that has a slushbox as anything more than a parts car or
conversion. 5 speed easily doubles the value of those.

 

How many people come down Pikes Peak? Dunno about you but I'd much
rather wear out my brakes than my transmission and engine. Downshifting
has it's place and I do it occasionally, but I see no point in doing it
regularly. The engine and gearbox are for accelerating, the brakes are
for slowing down. Besides, every automatic I've ever seen can be
manually downshifted if you really want to.

 

Well, everyone else seems to be putting in their two cents, so I guess
I will too...

Personally, I prefer an automatic, but for those winding roads where a
manual would be nice, I'd go with Shiftronic or a similar system,
especially in the V70 or XC70 -- something I would drive mostly on
highways. On a C70 or even a V70R I could definitely go with a manual,
but I wouldn't drive it on the interstate back and forth to work every
day, either. Sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic on I-95 around
Baltimore just seems to take the fun out of a manual, you know?

 

In an earlier contribution to this discussion,

Is that on a worldwide basis - or just in the good old US of A?
--
Cheers,
Roger
______
Email address maintained for newsgroup use only, and not regularly
monitored.. Messages sent to it may not be read for several weeks.
PLEASE REPLY TO NEWSGROUP!

 

Heh that kinda takes the fun out of driving in general. If I have to sit
on the freeway, I'd rather just take the bus.

 

I never heard of anyone wearing out their transmission or engine using
engine compression braking. I do it constantly on all my cars, even the
automatics. Never once have any shown any signs of unusual wear & I
seldom ever have to change brake components. If you don't down shift on
Pikes Peak they have check points with gift shops where they make your
car sit until its brake temperatures come down to normal. They use an
infrared thermometer. They had too many people killing themselves
before they enforced it.

By the way, Pikes Peak in Colorado has a public highway that goes to the
top, 14,110 feet. The 38-mile round trip to the summit of Pikes Peak
takes about two hours. The road is a toll road. The record going up is
10 minutes and 4.6 seconds but that is on a 12.42 mile gravel shortcut.
Their official advice for descending is "Use your lowest gear to allow
your engine to brake your vehicle. Don't ride your brakes; this will
cause them to overheat and drastically reduce their effectiveness."
Last year a Texas woman died after her brakes failed and she crashed
while coming down the Pikes Peak Highway.

The engine is designed to run for thousands of hours with no unusual
damage. The brakes are designed for a modest amount of braking before
they need replacing. Brakes use friction which is a destructive method
that reduces brake pads to dust and produces heat that warps rotors.
The engine uses air compression which is not destructive and just
produces heat which is vented out the exhaust.

I would rather take the back roads, even if it takes longer. Driving
interstate highways is about as much fun as eating poi. However if
relaxation and speed are more important than fun, the interstate
highways it is.

 

I thought this was the Volvo group.

 

Starting in the 1950's, automatic transmissions have been popular in the
U.S. In fact, they account for 84% of cars sold in North America. The
same is not true for the rest of the world. Japan has shifted to mostly
automatic transmissions and South Korea is shifting. This has, however,
not been the case in Europe.

Early automatic transmissions reduced fuel efficiency and power. Where
fuel is expensive and, thus, engines generally smaller, these penalties
were more burdensome. In recent years, automatic transmissions have
significantly improved their efficiency and have drastically closed the
gap with manual transmissions. Continuously variable transmissions and
automated manual transmissions promise to be more efficient and produce
lower levels of emissions than manual transmission vehicles. As a
result, foreign markets are shifting (no pun intended) to automatics.
The number of manual transmissions manufactured in the world is starting
to decline and the number of automatic transmissions is increasing
rapidly. Many new AT factories are being built.

The key difference between a manual and an automatic transmission is
that the manual transmission locks and unlocks different sets of gears
to the output shaft to achieve the various gear ratios, while in an
automatic transmission, the same set of gears produces all of the
different gear ratios. The planetary gearset is the device that makes
this possible in an automatic transmission. Hence, a modern AT is very
simple and in some cases lighter than a clutch/manual transmission
combination.

 

I vividly recall a day around 1970, descending a long shallow hill around
Bonny Doon near Santa Cruz in the San Francisco bay area, driving a Chevy
with 4-wheel drum brakes. The brakes faded away to nothing, leaving me with
both feet braced hard against the pedal and the car rolling merrily (bonny?)
down (doon?) the hill. The car had a two speed "Powerglide" transmission and
low gear didn't do the job.

IIRC, the transmission, mated with the 6 cylinder "Turbothrift" engine, did
more thrifting and gliding than turboing and powering!

Mike

 

Well Volvos are very durable cars, but it's undeniable that engine
braking will accelerate wear on components, it raises the engine RPM
which causes the pistons to travel a greater distance, puts load on the
bearings, etc. That stuff will still probably outlast the rest of the
car in the case of a Volvo but it does increase wear, just as driving it
harder does. I don't think most people ever own their cars long enough
to know just how much of an affect this has. Down long hills yes, it's
strongly advisable to leave the car in gear to get some engine braking
but the fact remains that any reasonably modern automatic car can do
this too by moving the selector to 2 or 1, you don't need some fancy
electronic pushbutton shifting to do that. I would still argue that a
standard manual gearbox is superior for this sort of thing as well but
in either case it's no great skill to be able to downshift, anyone who
can drive a car in any capacity can do it should they choose to.

When it comes down to it though I personally can't stand that
disconnected floaty feeling a torque converter creates. A standard
gearbox has a nice solid mechanically connected feel and that's all my
original point ever was, I didn't mean to get into a religious war.

 

In an earlier contribution to this discussion,

Yes, I thought as much! So your "80% of the population don't drive sticks
anymore" needs a fair bit of qualification - particularly in Europe, where I
live (UK in my particular case).

The key difference with 'traditional' automatic transmissions was the
presence of a torque converter (slush pump) which - whilst it eliminated the
need for a conventional clutch and enabled the geared part of the
transmission to have a narrower ratio range than a manual - was pretty
inefficient overall, resulting in poorer fuel economy. It's many years since
I was involved in automatic transmission design (1970's) but lock-up
clutches were just coming in then, to by-pass the torque converter at higher
road speeds.

I'm not sure that planetary gears are intrinsically more efficient than
conventional lay-shaft-type gearsets. I suppose that at any point in time
there are less unused gears churning round in the oil, but at the same time
they need hydraulically-operated friction clutches to engage the appropriate
part of the planetary train. There thus needs to be an oil pump to drive the
hydraulics - which itself consumes power.

I'm not very familiar with the technology used in the latest automated
manual boxes. They presumably use centrifugal clutches rather than torque
converters as a starting device?
--
Cheers,
Roger
______
Email address maintained for newsgroup use only, and not regularly
monitored.. Messages sent to it may not be read for several weeks.
PLEASE REPLY TO NEWSGROUP!

 

It is and I have a Volvo ('98 V70 with auto gearbox).

I was just offering you a comparison to a more modern style of Auto box.

Richard
Web pages: http://www.caravanningnow.co.uk/ for caravanning,
http://www.rcole.org/ for my personal web site and
http://www.homeindorset.co.uk because I love the email address.

 

I wish I could say the same. We had an automatic gearbox replaced after
only 43,000 kms. It just f*****ing let go.

Just recently, my uncle experienced the same kind of a fault. And guess
what, he had excatly 43,000 kms on his Ocean Race edition V70. Ours is
V70 2,4T, yearmodel 2001. I have been writing about this issue in this
forum as well, so I won't go into the details again. I just thought that
some of you might find it interesting that Volvo's reputation in
building solid automatic gearboxes is definitely questionable.

And we went on buying yet another V70 (ym.2006), and now we have 30,000
kms in it. I wonder if it will pass 45,000 mark without a clitch...