Welcome to the shop, today I will explain
by showing you here in my cars how the clutch in the 2 speed transmission in a nitro R/C
works and shifts the gears up and down. What I will talk about covers the most common
type of clutches found in a nitro R/C today. This is the centrifugal clutch. In a very short summary how this works, is
at a certain adjusted point the clutch will slip in the second gear. So as an example, without using real numbers
just in theory. lets say I have set my clutch to shift to
2nd gear at 1 horsepower of output. When the engine accelerates and hits 1horsepower
the clutch will slip up and go to the 2nd gear. Now as long as the engine is keep making that
much power or more maybe 2 or 3 horsepower then the clutch will keep the 2nd gear engaged
. If the engine starts slowing down and falls bellow the power threshold of 1 horsepower,
that the clutch us adjusted the clutch then wont be able to keep the 2nd gear engaged
and it will return back to 1st gear.
Now I know this doesn’t happen exactly because
of the horsepower as I said but more because of the centrifugal torque that is created
by the spinning engine but this is the general idea behind the clutch operation. As I said before most clutches are adjustable
and are usually tuned by the manufacturer for the peak torque point of each engine. So a drift car it will have a much higher
sifting point compared to a truck as an example.
Since a drift car will have a very high rpm
type of engine and benefits by late shifts or even a single gear transmission, when a
truck needs more torque on the first gear to accelerate because of the weight but it
will also have to switch earlier to 2nd gear before the engine runs out of its peak output
range due to its design. Now I hope this gave you a better idea on
how rc nitro clutches work. I will have a follow up video soon to explain
how more advanced nitro slipper clutches work soon too. Thank you for watching and see you next time..
