The Official Funny Stuff Thread™
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You can't anyway; you'll grind the dog gears into powder long before you force them to engage
A couple years ago, I was driving about 45mph in my car (2004 Kia Sedona automatic if it matters) and I was goofing around a bit and I accidentally shifted from D into R. Modern automatics will not engage the gear! If you touch-type, you know what it's like when you hit the wrong key--you KNOW as you're reaching you done goofed, and I had the same feeling.
Although I wouldn't recommend testing that on your own car.
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Although I wouldn't recommend testing that on your own car.
Couldn't even if I wanted to: I drive a manual
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So the point of the comic is... what? Oh right. Jack shit.
It's just a "there's two kinds of people" joke. Some people find 'em funny. It's OK if you don't happen to.
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The minimize/maximize/close buttons belong on the right-hand side of the window.
Well, that's the fault of Ye Olde Dumbshit Apple/Ubuntu/whoever Does That Stupid Thing dev, right?
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That sounds like a personal problem. It also sounds like those of us who live near you should be glad you're driving an automatic.
It's not actually a bad idea to have R require a bit of extra effort. I dunno if manuals have an interlock the way modern autos do to prevent the gear engaging.
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Get over manual transmissions already.
BUT YOU COULD GET AN EXTRA 1MPG WITH A MANUAL, YOU HORRIBLE GAIA-RAPER!
Who here drives an automatic and doesn't immediately set out to learn the shift points and how to use the gas pedal to adjust when the transaxle shifts if necessary?
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I DON'T WANT ANY CAR WITH A MANUAL TRANSMISSION.
I always wanted to learn manual, mainly for the sake of knowing if I needed it. I live in a city and 95% of my driving is stop-and-go traffic. I don't really want to use a manual.
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I always wanted to learn manual, mainly for the sake of knowing if I needed it.
I have done it before, though it's been a while. This experience confirmed my preference for automatic cars. I am admittedly not a "car guy." My car is for getting around. The journey is subordinate to the destination.
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It's not actually a bad idea to have R require a bit of extra effort. I dunno if manuals have an interlock the way modern autos do to prevent the gear engaging.
I've been driving manual transmission cars for 20 years, and have never had one without some type of interlock to prevent accidentally shifting into reverse. Blakeyrat was saying there should be an offset in addition to the interlock, or move it next to 1st gear.
Who here drives an automatic and doesn't immediately set out to learn the shift points and how to use the gas pedal to adjust when the transaxle shifts if necessary?
Half of the DFW population?
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@blakeyrat said:
at no additional cost
Come on. Moving the R path a quarter of an inch can't possible result in a measurable cost increase. A manual transmission already costs, what, a thousand dollars[1]?
[1] or two, or somewhere in that ballpark, whatever.
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Couldn't even if I wanted to: I drive a manual
You could certainly try to shift from a forward gear directly into reverse, unless the transmission blocks it with a button or whatever, as has been mentioned above.
I still, as I said, wouldn't recommend it.
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I've been driving manual transmission cars for 20 years, and have never had one without some type of interlock to prevent accidentally shifting into reverse. Blakeyrat was saying there should be an offset in addition to the interlock, or move it next to 1st gear.
I would consider an interlock sufficient, myself, but I'm not, like @blakeyrat, the kind of person to stake out a position and defend it come Hell or high water, even if there's an equivalent position.
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Half of the DFW population?
I admit, I am always amused when I manage to get next to someone in a car with a bigger engine than mine at a red light, and then when it goes green, I go sailing on past, because he doesn't know how to keep his manual moving when he shifts gears so he coasts for a second or two.
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Blakeyrat was saying there should be an offset in addition to the interlock, or move it next to 1st gear.
Offset I can agree with. Next to first is asking for trouble. With five forward gears and reverse under fifth you have three positions horizontally: as far left as it will go, as far right as it will go, and where it springs back to with no horizontal pressure applied.
You never have to judge how far you've moved it, it's either as far as it will go, or not at all. Reverse gear next to first: now there's four horizontal positions.
I don't really know what my car has in terms of interlock for reverse gear - I've never accidentally tried to put the stick into the R slot while moving - but it's damned hard to get into reverse even if you're trying. The stick goes down into what looks like reverse, let the clutch back up, and it's in neutral. I can only assume there's some sort of dummy slot opposite fifth, and the real reverse position is fractionally to the right, or something.
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My car has R next to 1; there's a button under the knob I have to push to engage R
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there's a button under the knob I have to push to engage R
Then it doesn't matter where it is from a 'not accidentally engaging R' perspective - straight opposite 5 would be just as safe.
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BUT YOU COULD GET AN EXTRA 1MPG WITH A MANUAL, YOU HORRIBLE GAIA-RAPER!
Or you could lose that same 1MPG, depending on the car model, you damn hippie. :P
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Did you just "there's two kinds of people. There's you, and then there's us" to @blakey?
Gutsy.
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Jus a question (not specifically to you, @frostcat ). Would not adding the half inch displaxement on the gear stick require quite a massive change on the gear box? Unless the stick is electronic, that is...
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Would not adding the half inch displaxement on the gear stick require quite a massive change on the gear box?
You wouldn't need to add that much; an 1/8 would be enough. And it wouldn't require any major redesign, just a tweak to the selector rods.
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It definitely strikes me as a "why WOULDN'T you do this?" thing.
Adding some kind of toggle or button or what-not to the stick has got to be way more expensive than just notching the metal in a slightly different fashion.
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Not really; on my car, the button simply pulls a sleeve up so the lever can go through the narrower part of the gate to R
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The minimize/maximize/close buttons belong on the right-hand side of the window.
No regrets!
The triangle opens the window menu, by the way.
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Not really; on my car, the button simply pulls a sleeve up so the lever can go through the narrower part of the gate to R
SO THERE IS A PHYSICAL BARRIER THAT IS WHA--- ewoiurywe ior ywricwuyrf geuayf gyuesfgau guewyarfg aukw goddamned I hate you all
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I never said otherwise; in fact, I said my car's gear lever had something right from the start
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You win!
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SO THERE IS A PHYSICAL BARRIER THAT IS WHA--- ewoiurywe ior ywricwuyrf geuayf gyuesfgau guewyarfg aukw goddamned I hate you all
Nice meltdown!
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Or you could lose that same 1MPG, depending on the car model, you damn hippie.
People keep telling me that stick's more fuel-efficient, but the manufacturers usually only show nominal increases.
I also keep hearing buggy-whip, I mean manual, aficionados calling automatics "slushboxes" as if it were 1963 or something and you couldn't get finely-tuned 6- and 7-speed autos on higher-end cars, etc.
Plus, there's a lot to be said for not having to constantly shift in stop-and-go city traffic.
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Did you just "there's two kinds of people. There's you, and then there's us" to @blakey?
Gutsy.
Gutsy? To an internet persona?
The funny thing was I wasn't even intending to do that.
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Would not adding the half inch displaxement on the gear stick require quite a massive change on the gear box?
I guess it would depend on the gearbox? I mean, there's a lever already, so at most, maybe a new linkage or two would be necessary for some models.
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SO THERE IS A PHYSICAL BARRIER THAT IS WHA
Oh, you finally decided to read what people are writing, eh?
It was mentioned--repeatedly--upthread that some (many?) models do that.
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People keep telling me that stick's more fuel-efficient, but the manufacturers usually only show nominal increases.
Traditional purely-mechanical automatics were probably less fuel-efficient than manual.
Modern computer-controlled gearboxes are almost as efficient as a human in a manual driving perfectly, and probably more efficient than the average human.
I doubt a computer controlled gearbox can ever be as efficient as a human driving perfectly, as the human can think ahead and shift before accelerating or decelerating, while the automatic must always follow.
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Traditional purely-mechanical automatics were probably less fuel-efficient than manual.
True. But I did allude to blakey's timepod.
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On the 2 cars I've tried with a design like that, you can't directly switch from 5th gear to reverse, you have to move it to the centre first as a safety measure.
That's interesting and, as a non-car guy, not something I'd considered.
Is this always the case though? I seem to recall reading something years about one of the Top Gear presenters (Clarkson?) trashing a sports car (Ferrari?) by accidentally putting it into reverse at high speed. Google-fu letting me down...
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Who here drives an automatic and doesn't immediately set out to learn the shift points and how to use the gas pedal to adjust when the transaxle shifts if necessary?
Did that with my last one. But I've got CVT now. I've found it I hold the tach at 2200, I can smoothly accelerate to 65mph and the tach never changes.
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move it next to 1st gear.
Having 1st and R close is nice. I've had to rock a car out of (mud/snow/sand/can't remember). No way in hell I could do that with my current automatic - there's too much delay in the transmission before it engages.
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My car is for getting around. The journey is subordinate to the destination.
This. However, when I was (much) younger and gas was around 0.30/gal, "going for a drive" was something one did for fun. Later, as a teenager (gas around, maybe, $1/gal), it was still something to do for fun, just because I could (and for practice). We lived in L.A.; however, we were pretty close to the edge of the suburbs, so the traffic was never bad, and it was only a few minutes to be on the open highway heading toward the desert or mountains.
stop-and-go traffic. I don't really want to use a manual.
BTDT. Do not want.
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But I've got CVT now
But that's a different technology, and there aren't actually shift points, right? You're still doing the equivalent of what I was talking about, learning the best way to make the device work for you.
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No way in hell I could do that with my current automatic - there's too much delay in the transmission before it engages.
What kind of transmissions are you using? I was rocking out of snow with 80s-era cars, in the 80s.
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"going for a drive" was something one did for fun.
You can still do it as long as you're making enough money, heh. I wouldn't expect a teenager to be able to, of course.
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I haven't driven a stick in many years, after learning pretty emphatically that I tend to use the clutch to hold the car on a hill. Best not to tempt fate.
But my first car was a stick. And reverse was all the way to the right and down, just like the diagram that started this whole conversation. Only difference was, mine didn't have a "5" so there was no forward gear directly opposite "R".
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I tend to use the clutch to hold the car on a hill
Why do you hate clutches so much?
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They're both wrong. The minimize/maximize/close buttons belong on the right-hand side of the window.
The close button on the LHS, minimize and maximize on the RHS.
That way you can't possibly click close by accident when you wanted to click maximize.
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Get rid of those buttons entirely?
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Get rid of those buttons entirely?
That would actually work on my Linux computers, because I've bound minimize and maximize to keycombo's.
On the Windows machine my employer forces me to use, I couldn't remove those buttons (I don't think it's possible, at least).
I could use the Windows key combinations for minimize, maximize and close though.
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I tend to use the clutch to hold the car on a hill
Why do you hate clutches so much?
A clutch killed my father.
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http://stupidfox.net/38
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My home box is configured with min/max/close on the right. My work box is actually configured with a close button only - you can also maximize by double-clicking the title bar (also works on windows).
I don't have a quick way to minimize but I rarely use it anyway - windows naturally go to the background as I activate others. I probably use 'always on top' from the context menu more often than I use minimize.