On Sat, 20 Mar 2010 08:17:37 -0400, wrote:

On Fri, 19 Mar 2010 22:32:36 -0400, wrote:

On Thu, 18 Mar 2010 21:07:03 -0400, wrote:

On Thu, 18 Mar 2010 20:25:26 -0400, wrote:

On Thu, 18 Mar 2010 17:20:26 -0400, wrote:

On Thu, 18 Mar 2010 16:44:06 -0400, wrote:

On Thu, 18 Mar 2010 07:47:46 -0700 (PDT), Harry K
wrote:

On Mar 18, 5:14Â*am, wrote:
On Wed, 17 Mar 2010 23:39:54 -0700, Ashton Crusher
wrote:





On Wed, 17 Mar 2010 21:27:04 -0400, wrote:

On Wed, 17 Mar 2010 18:50:47 -0400, "Ed Pawlowski"
wrote:

"jamesgangnc" wrote
I defy anyone to drive any time at all with their left foot in the air
above the pedal. Â*Whether they are aware of it or not, they _will_
have their foot touching the pedal.

Harry K

If you have your left foot on the brake you need to hold the foot up.
Resting the front of your foot on the brake pedal is riding the brakes
on many cars. Â*After hours on the road you will relax those muscles.

As a practical matter, you don't hold your foot in the air, nor do you rest
in on the pedal. You keep your foot on the floor just like any other driver.
If you are in a situation where you "may" need the brakes at any time, you
can then elect to move that foot to a ready position, thus the faster
reaction time.
Â*If you are a right-foot braker and you are in a situation where you
might need to brake at any time you take your RIGHT foot off the
accellerator, and while it is still in motion, without having to
command the LEFT foot to do anything, you hit the brakes.

Much faster reaction time, and NO CHANCE that both feet will be down
at the same time on both pedals.

Left foot braking IS dangerous - it doesn't matter how many years YOU
have gotten away with it..

how ridiculous. Â*whatever you can do with your right foot you can do
just as quickly with your left foot. Â*The difference is that you can
pre-position your left foot in situations where you would not be
taking your right foot off the throttle. Â*In doing so you eliminate
about a half second of reaction time should that situation deteriorate
to where you do need to brake. Â*There is nothing dangerous about left
foot braking, to the contrary, it's safer then right foot braking. You
sound like a hysterical old woman.

The ONLY reason that braking with the right foot is customary is
because cars used to have a third pedal for the clutch. If the first
cars had come equipped with automatic transmissions, NO ONE would use
their right foot for braking. It would be stone cold stupid to do
everything with one foot, unless your other foot had been amputated.

Do these chuckleheads steer with only one hand, because in the olden
days, you needed your other hand for shifting?- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Now THAT goes beyond stupid. The only car I know of that had 3 pedals
was the Model T.

Harry K
You sure about that, Harry??
Every standard shift car I ever drove had 3 pedals.
Some even had 4 (foot operated emergency brake)

My 1940's Chevys had 4 pedals, but none were the emergency brake.

And VW had a "clutchless" stick shift. I think it had a centrifical
clutch that did not require a pedal. It disengaged when you took your
foot off the gas.


- No it disengaged when you touched the shift lever.

Really? Then why did you have to lower revs to get it into the next
higher gear?

Do a google or bing search for "Saxomat" for more information.

You must be talking about a different system. I'm talking the
"autostick"
Officially called the Volkswagen Automatic Stickshift, this
transmission was a three speed manual transmission connected to a
vacuum-operated automatic clutch. When the driver put their hand on
the gearshift the clutch would disengage by a 12volt solenoid
operating the vacuum clutch, allowing shifting between gears, once
they removed their hand the clutch would re-engage automatically. The
transmission was also equipped with a torque converter, allowing the
car to idle in gear, like an automatic. This transmission was first
available on the 1968 Volkswagen Beetle, and was made available on the
Karmann Ghia in 1969. VW dropped the transmission option altogether in
1976.

I've both driven and worked on them.



I even gave you the exact NAME of the system I was talking about, so
you could look it up.
Except the Saxomat was never sold on a VW in North America.
As far as I know it was not sold in ANYTHING in North America
We didn't get Borgward, Goliath, Trabant, DKW, GLAS, NSU, and Wartburg
over here, and no '61-66 1800 Fiats or Saab 93s with "automatic"
transmissions.

The true Saxomat did have an centrifical clutch.
The VW Autostick as sold in North America between roughly 1965 and
1968 did NOT.