It’s confession time!

Hello,
I have today for the first time driven my resurrected AW75 Talbot with traffic clutch and Wilson box, it up -changes nicely as it should but.....it reaches top, indicated by the lever being next to the number four, then if I depress the foot pedal again it selects a further fifth gear, with a slight whining noise but a gain in ratio dropping the engine revolutions, this seemed very odd so I stopped and put it back through the gears counting as it changed and again, five forward speeds, is it possible to engage clutch bands in the wrong sequence and obtain another gear? is it possible I have a unique five speed?
I have owned two Daimlers with pre-selectors and driven a few thousand miles with them so I am not green as grass with these boxes.
Concerned about the possibility of doing damage I have only driven about 300 yds in "Top" (with a whine) and then put the car away until further investigation.
I will next week see ig I can gain access through the floor and remove the top of the gearbox to count the clutch bands.
Regards,
Sam

My 1935 Talbot (Lago) T120 Baby Sport is equipped with this Wilson preselector. It ad's lots of pleasure and ease to driving the car. It enables you to change gears in a split second what proved to be a big advantage in the racing history of Talbot Lago and in my case to easely leave cars behind at traffic light starts. It's also very easy to switch to lower gears what makes is possible to profit maximal from braking potential of the engine. Only disadvantage is a slighly heavier clutch (Talbot Lago combined a normal clutch with the preselector)and you have to become used to it. The preselector will accept any possible gear change which also can result in surprises or even mechanical damage (imagine changing to reverse when driving at a certain speed). Although I already have quite some documents concerning the Wilson preselector I am surely going to buy this book.

Bas

Yes John, the problem you had with the pedal coming too far back (either by not setting the preselector lever correctly or not pushing the pedal to its full extend) is described in detail in my book.

Johns experience with the Riley must have been quite a fright to be remembered 55 years later. I've noticed that the distance between the 'slots' on the quadrant is greater on the Riley than on my Talbot 65, possibly providing a greater risk of getting 'hung up' between gears. At one time I had some problems engaging 3rd gear - though without the frightening pedal movement John reports. In my case it was a matter of adjustment. On todays cars electronics take care of things, but this is an entirely mechanical device and both adjustment and accurate placement of the lever can be critical. The Talbot hand book advises periodic 'pumping' of the engagement pedal to take up any slack in the actuating bands. George Roesch called his version the 'accelerating gearbox', and boxes made by ENV were fitted to ERA racing cars. Weight only became a problem when various types of complex clutch devices were added. When tested a late Talbot 65 fitted with a 'traffic clutch' took 31 seconds to reach 50mph, about 4 seconds longer than the earlier cars. There were additional reasons for the considerable weight rise (to nearly 32cwt) but this clutch certainly added both weight and drag. However, Daimler managed to keep the weight of their popular 15 model down to 23/24cwt, complete with Wilson gearbox and fluid flywheel (it had a much lighter frame than my Talbot) and on test this car got up to 50mph in about 23 seconds- whch seems slow but was then quite good, given that a similar size Austin required 40 seconds! Really the reputation of Daimler and Lanchester cars for being slow had as much to do with the people who bought them as with the cars themselves. It was well recorded that nervous drivers were attracted to 'easy gearchanging' mechanism but, even with these, they quickly engaged top gear and rarely risked changing down again! (For anyone not familiar with English cwt, one cwt is 112 pounds weight).

I have driven Daimler and Armstrong-Sidley preselectors but the best was the AEC bus chassis. An excellent system, but then weight would not have been a problem.

This reminds me of the first time I drove a car with a Wilson gearbox. It was a Riley that a friend had lent me because my Austin 7 had broken a half shaft. The year was 1956 when many young people were very casual about insurance and road tax. The first few miles went OK until I went to shift down on a hill and did not quite engage the correct slot on the steering column quadrant. Instead of the car shifting down as I pressed the pedal, the pedal came up again about 30 cms with no gear engaged. Quite a shock in the dark, but reading the manual put me right. Does he mention this problem in the book?

Since my 1933 Talbot 65 has George Roesch's version of the Wilson 'box, I will buy this book- though I hope it does not prove too technical for me. Lanchester cars had used epicyclic gearboxes in 1901 and the Model T Ford also used planetary gears, but Wilson came up with by far the most 'user friendly' mechanical means of selecting and engaging such gears. I delight in using mine and since all gears are permanently in mesh I can never 'crunch' them. However, there is no clutch mechanism and the brake bands tend to 'snatch' at first gear when moving off; also, the gear sets rumble audibly whilst they turn whilst idling. A 'traffic clutch' or fluid flywheel overcame such problems but added complication, weight, drag and cost. In Britain once Austin and Morris adopted the- then quite inefficient but cheaper synchromesh the pre- selector struggled, since it added about £30 to the cost of cars fitted with it: this rather restricting its use to quite expensive cars. I am interested to learn exactly how the brake bands were preselected within the gearbox and how the engagement pedal operated the gear change- but hope I do not get lost in the technicalities. Incidentally Wilson sold rights to Vauxhall and much early work was done in their Luton works, but when General Motors bought Vauxhall in 1926 they initially tried to 'kill off' this work because it competed with a mechanism they were already developing themselves---synchromesh! I used to own a 1936 Bentley and this had excellent synchromesh- but only on 3rd and top gears. Synchromesh should, of course, have added cost, but mass producers built lighter gearboxes to avoid having to charge more for it, the dubious logic being that synchromesh gearboxes would be less vulnerable to abuse by inexpert drivers- hence the poor quality of many early synchromesh boxes.