Originally Posted by Jordan Y.

Woohoo! I didn't know exactly how it worked until I just went and read up on it, but I had a pretty good general idea of what it did and how it did it. I couldn't have written you a book on it but if I had talked about it within the limits of my knowledge I don't think I would have said something wrong, just a little vague on some parts. Now I understand it better.

Good thread, btw. I love threads that make me reexamine in greater detail something I've skipped over or done only a small amount of research on. Funny coincidence, I was on Howstuffworks.com for the last hour reading about other things I sorta-kinda knew about from school but never really understood. No better way to waste time than learning.

BTW I'm an import manual tranny fanboy and I have a great appreciation for the proper application of a built auto tranny. I've never built a primarily drag-oriented car, or a car with enough power to really justify going with an auto. With low power small displacement engines you're usually better off with a manual, to minimize losses of an already small amount of power through the drivetrain. When I build a car with enough power that the difficulty is not in having the power to accelerate the car but in delivering that power effectively to the ground, that car will have an auto.