By Katherine Helmetag

AKA atomicalex

I have to own up to a huge hole I've had in my automotive background: I don't know poop about automatic transmissions. Until Wednesday, that is, when I spent the morning at Ford's Van Dyke Transmission Plant (VDTP) getting a crash course in Transmission 101. The launch of the new 6F midrange (6F-35) transmission for the Ford Escape was the focus of the event, which included over an hour of training on the basics of automatics, and an extensive plant tour to show off what $370 million dollars can do to one of the biggest pits in the automotive manufacturing business: it can turn it into a highly automated, extremely clean, and very-low-error-rate production facility. We're not used to hearing about American auto companies dumping money into operations, but this is a clear case of spending that works. The new transmissions offer fuel economy and drivability gains that will be welcome in the US market. Continue reading...

Prior to the current product mix, VDTP hadn't seen major investment for over twenty years. Eighteen months ago, VDTP completed a 100% re-tooling to prepare it for production of the 4-speed transmission used in the Focus and the then upcoming 6F series. The 6F transmissions are the product of a joint development effort with General Motors, and no expenses were spared preparing the plant. This was not your normal die swap, this was the whole tear-out-the-presses, move-the-walls, and rip-up-the-floors job. From fully-automated, minimum-quantity-lubrication machining to robotic gasketing, to clean-room valve body assembly, this is what a modern auto plant looks like when you build it from the ground up. The freshly-tooled plant will produce 1.7 million transmissions per year when the third production line comes up later this year.

The new 6F came to life when Ford began a research program to build a six speed to provide smoother shifting and some fuel economy gains. At the same time, GM had begun a program with the same goals. With GM being the long-time leader in automatic transmission technology and performance (hello Hydramatic!), Ford approached with wallet open and bought into the GM development. This meant less upfront cost for both companies along with more engineers and staff for the program. The result of the joint development agreement is a transmission that contains a high number of swappable parts. The only obvious differences are the bell housings, which must be changed to mount to Ford or GM engines.

A six-speed transmission offers fuel economy gains by optimizing shift points to work with the power band of the engine. Each time you can reduce the revs required to transit a gear (get into and out of it), you can keep the engine closer to its economy sweet spot. I was surprised to learn that the top gear is staying the same numerically instead of getting lower – it's at 0.746. Grant Suchotsky, a trainer at Ford, explained that while overdrive gears are not physically limited, they are practically limited. At about 0.75, the gearing is at the maximum for top speed and performance. Much higher, and you lose access to the torque needed to go up hills or accelerate. And with torque being the operative force, Ford and GM chose to utilize a lower first gear to get the vehicles moving faster. The torque multiplication in lower gears is used to bring today's heavier vehicles off the line more quickly than would be possible with a regular four-speed automatic.  That is the drivability gain that Ford and GM hope will make the 6F the new standard in automatic transmission performance.

An important feature of the 6F series transmissions is their out of the box flat-towing capability. There is no "tow package" required, as all units have built-in fluid cooling. The cooling circuit can be switched off when starting up in low temperatures, which improves winter performance.

The assembly process starts out with assorted castings and parts kits. The parts kit is a preselected set of parts that will be used in one of the five assembly cells on each line. Kitting insures that the right parts will all be present as the assembly moves down the line, and offers up the option of using machined-to-match parts as are often found in engine assembly. The cell-based manufacturing process allows for errors in manufacturing to be spotted earlier--at the end of each cell, there are quality checks and should a transmission fail in the field, the failed part can be traced to a cell, which can then be reviewed for potential issues. After final assembly, the transmissions are filled with fluid and hot-tested for leaks, vibrations, and electronic issues that could result in either failure or consumer complaints. Rejected transmissions are sent back to the cell where the problem component was installed and dismantled for analysis. I'm used to seeing this level of attention to quality details in a Japanese plant, which VDTP could be mistaken for now.

I asked Ram Krishnaswami, the senior engineer on the 6F project, about the transmission fluid used in the 6F, because like everyone here on CarDomain, I'm always looking for a synthetic or higher performance alternative. "The introduction of the 6F happens to coincide with the introduction of our latest specification for ATF, but the fluid was not designed specifically for the 6F", he says. "The most important thing about the new fluid is that we have engineered it for a 150,000 mile change interval, and we hope that our customers will leave it alone! The valves in the transmission were designed to work with the new fluid and operate over the range of behaviors it has under different driving and weather conditions." Ram also noted that the gasket-less seal of the transmission case is there to improve durability--because the cases can be machined to tighter tolerances, the seal can be made more secure and far less likely to fail. The fact that it reduces cost is a bonus, too.

The question of the new dual-clutch technology came up, and Ford staff were up front: reports the death of the traditional automatic are highly exaggerated. Ford sees that the regular old planetary-gear automatics will continue to have a place in the market as long as there are high-torque engines in larger vehicles. American consumers in particular prefer not to know that their transmission exists, and the planetary boxes do a good job at that. The product team at Ford see the DSG-type boxes as having a role in smaller displacement engines producing less torque. They had no comment on whether Ford is considering DSG-type boxes for the future.

So after a morning of wet clutchplacks and torque converters, conveyors and milling machines, I'm a newly minted transmission technologist. Check out Ford's media website for some more details on new Ford technologies and more images from their facilities. http://media.ford.com