Corvair Powerglide

Chevrolet Corvair Powerglide is a two-speed automatic transmission designed specially for the then all-new 1960 Chevrolet Corvair compact car that emerged in the fall of 1959 as Chevrolet's competitor in the then booming small car market. The Corvair was powered by a six-cylinder rear engine that necessitated a specially designed transaxle. Corvair Powerglide took the principles of the standard Chevrolet Powerglide and modified them to suit the rear-mounted powertrain location of the new Corvair. The Corvair used the Powerglide for all 10 years it was produced; from 1961 to 1963, Pontiac used a modified version of Corvair Powerglide it called 'TempesTorque' for its front-engine, rear-transaxle Tempest, LeMans and Tempest LeMans cars.

Corvair Powerglide is a fully automatic, two-speed, rwd aluminum-cased automatic transmission mounted directly to the forward face of the cast iron differential housing. It uses a three-element, welded assembly 10 in (25 cm) diameter torque converter mounted remotely on the rear face of the differential, (that also incorporates the starter ring gear, and a centrifugal fan baffle for cooling, via slots in the engine bellhousing) and is driven directly from the engine crankshaft by a flexplate inside the engine bellhousing. The selector quadrant is arranged R-N-D-L, or Reverse, Neutral, Drive and Low, with no "Park" (except in Pontiac's 1963 version, redesigned to handle the increased torque of a new V8 engine in Tempest and LeMans, added by means of a separate lever). Range selection is via dash-mounted selector lever operating a sheathed cable that moves a spool valve range selector in the transmission valve body.

Due to the rear-mounted engine, the differential lies between the transmission and engine, so drive to the transmission from the engine is carried forward via a hollow turbine shaft from the engine mounted torque converter to the transmission gearbox. Power from the gearbox was carried rearward again to the differential pinion gear via yet another, concentric hollow shaft of larger diameter. A small concentric shaft inside the turbine shaft operated the front pump of the transmission to permit engagement of drive/reverse ranges when the car was stopped or moving slowly; at speeds over 15 mph (24 km/h), a differential-driven (from the car motion) rear pump of smaller capacity and greater efficiency took over and the front pump shut down to improve fuel economy.

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