David Brown to Produce Auto Transmission
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THE rights for the manufacture of the Ebert hydromechanical transmission have been acquired for the U.K. and a number of other countries by David Brown Industries Ltd. The transmission, which was invented by Dr. Ing, Heinrich Ebert. a West German consulting engineer, has been developed in association with a number of German and American companies and is basically similar to a multi-ratio constant-mesh gearbox.
Hydrostatic circuits are integrated with the gearing to give a stepless, highefficiency drive and the unit is said to occupy no more space than a comparable conventional manual gearbox and clutch. Features claimed for the design, which will be of value on commercial and passenger vehicles, are that there is automatic ratio selection to give the minimum fuel consumption and there is considerable engine braking by driver-controlled ratio changing. Any required ratio spread can be covered in the design— from overdrive to a 16-to-1 torque multiplication.
Design work on a number of projects is reported to have been started already and David Brown expects to grant manufacturing sub licences to several companies.