Car Transmission

When you are deciding to book your car hire you may want to consider hiring a manual car hire rather than an automatic transmission. If this is the case then you will need to make a specific request for manual car hire as a lot of the vehicles on offer these days are automatic. Make sure when you complete your request you read the small print carefully to ensure that you have ordered within the manual car hire options and not the automatic ones on offer.

When you have chosen your manual car on line payment can be made on line or on arrival in your destination. Manual car hire will require payment to be made in the local currency.

If you are not sure of the differences between a manual car and an automatic car then there are various positive differences to bear in mind. Manual car hire is so much more fuel efficient in these times of high fuel prices. A manual car could save you as much as 25% petrol consumption. Please bear in mind that fuel costs overseas will be in the local currency and that you can pay for your fuel in cash or credit card.

A manual car is also likely to drive faster and smoother enabling you to the cruise the roads with ease. You need to be aware if you are used to driving an automatic car that manual car hire will involve changing gears up and down when slowing down and accelerating but if it’s a long time since you have driven a manual car then you may enjoy the experience of real driving again.

If you drive a manual car in the UK then do not be put off by changing to an automatic car rather than a manual car. It’s easy to hire and drive an automatic car or a manual car when you are overseas as the roads are excellent and easy to navigate. The manual car hire companies who are based abroad will also assist you when you collect the vehicle if you need any assistance with planning your journey.

Manual car hire will include manual cars with all of the optional extras you might expect to have in an automatic car. Optional extras like air conditioning or a sun roof will be available in manual cars.

Also you can expect to find satellite navigation in manual cars as well as automatic cars so if you are concerned about driving overseas or in an area that you are not familiar and not knowing your route very well just ensure that you select manual car hire and look for the optional extra of satellite navigation. It might be offered as standard in some manual cars but check carefully if you would like this facility in your manual car hire.

There are so many models available in the manual car hire section which will range from 2 door small manual cars to the larger manual people carriers. The larger vehicles will probably be automatic transmission so check that a manual car is available if you specifically need a larger vehicle.




By: Michael J Lee

Once you have built that big bad engine for your muscle car, you’ll need to be 100% sure that a few other things match the engine that you just built, this is another one of those times when you need to think about what it is you want the car to do, is it a daily driver, or a race car / show car.

What you use the car to do will change the set up of things like the rear end, suspension, and transmission immensely, you can divide the two things evenly, but it usually doesn’t work very well to put a race engine on the street as your daily driver.

To get lower ET’s at the drag strip the racers are usually running a low rear end gear, or ring and pinion set to lower their time when they run the ¼ mile, and the lower the rear gear, the harder it becomes to drive the car on the street every day.

Most of the real racers are running a gear set that has a 4.30:1 ratio or a a lot lower, while most street cars don’t run a gear lower then 3.73:1, as a matter of fact it’s more common to see even higher gears then that on the street, like 2.90:1.

Obviously the lower the gear in the rear end of your car, the harder it will be to take your car on the freeway around your city, the engine will rap out at a lower rpm, but this is ideal for a race car, when you build your engine, get the company that you buy your cam from to recommend the right gear set. (more…)