02Impressor

Ok some will laugh at this question, while others will hopefully laugh and answer. I have a 2002 C230 Kompressor with automatic and touch shift manual. My friend says the touch shift is bull**** because its not real stick **** manual drive with 3rd pedal.... so whats the deal? Isn't manual, a manual period? What is the differnce between the two?

thx in advance

Goldeni245

yeah, it's just a bull**** Manual mode...same as Tiptronic, Shiftronic, and Manumatic, Speedtronic and anyother crap out there lol.

Actually i dunno, but the good thing about it is that it won't let the engine over rev when you downshift. Or it won't let you go that fast in a specific gear, ex: reaching the rev limiter.

Usually, even in drag racing or whatever in order to get maxium accerlation people with touch-shift usually just mash the pedal. I wouldn't start in first gear on a touch shift car and shift my way. the auto gearbox in MB is already very very good. And matches the performance of their manual gearboxes. Everytime i speed up, when the auto changes gears, i always see the rpm needle fall back down into the engine sweet spot...(about 3000-4000 rpm).

Is what i just wrote right? I'm just shooting my mouth off with whatever facts people told me in the past lol.

z3r0

The touchshift is actually you shifting between your automatic gears instead of the computer doing it for you. It does not use the same setup as a true manual tranny. Since it is still a slushbox, it has the good old torque converter in it which is the best way to loose power. This torque converter in a way plays one of the many roles of the clutch in your car. In a manual you use the clutch to disconnect the engine from the engine, in your car the troque converter takes care of this. However, a manual tranny is all mechanical, while an auto tranny uses fluid in the torque converter. It's hard to explain but the use of this fluid in the torque converter is the cause of a lot of powerloss and slower starts. Also, I'm not sure about this one but, the torque converter can't catch up to the speed of the engine and this causes a lot of power to be wasted leading in bad topspeed and gas mileage. Besides all this, you can't do all the other cool stuff in your touchshift that you can do in a manual. For example, you can't rev up your engine to lets say 3k - 4k RPM and then drop it into first gear which makes for some fun times. Some of the true auto clutch cars out there have this feature built in such as the Euro Spec BMW M3 SMG. SO basically, your car is just a fancy auto transmission. What you probably have it confused with is transmissions from ferrari, toyota, and BMW that have a clutch that is controlled by the computer. Those cars don't have a torque converter, yours does.

Air Marshall Eldritch

I thought I heard about a feature in some auto trannies that locks the torque converter if the system senses consistent speed. Like if you cruise down the highway at 90, it will lock in place so that it doesn't lag behind the engine.

I dunno.

E420SportGT

I own the best of both worlds...
1. Automatic beast for cruising...
2. Stick for all constant fishtailing and those curvy curvy country roads

But to answer your question, touchshift has no clutch pedal, you'll never stall, basically an enhanced automatic. Manual stick shift transmission means you actually know how to drive a car/truck. Period.

z3r0

You are absoluteley correct. What you are talking about is usually refered to as a lock up torque converter (Correct name is lock up clutch). What this does, is it senses when the two parts of the torque converter are at or almost at the same speed than locks the two toghether to avoid slippage, very usefull.

Actually it is possible to stall in an automatic but only when your transmission is really worn out. My friend use to show off his 88 Auto Accord that could stall, neat stuff!