Seems to me that when you’re driving a manual transmission vehicle and you engage the clutch, you decouple the flywheel from the transmission. My recollection is that T&R express the opposite action when talking about engaging the clutch i.e., that by engaging the clutch the flywheel and transmission are coupled.
OTOH, maybe it’s one of those “flammable/inflammable” things or the inexorable march of English toward correctness per usage convention. Come to think of it, I could care less.
Never mind,
former Mechania staffer
My understanding is the same as T&R. Comments about ‘clutch engagement’ relate to the process of taking your foot off the clutch pedal, not depressing it.
We have a choice of engage or disengage, to me engage is letting yore foot off the petal, and disengage is putting your foot on the pedal.
Exactly as Barkydog said.
Consider the term as applied to marriage. Engage is a promise to come together. Of course the opposite is divorce not disengagement. Personally I don’t want to marry my clutch I just want to live with it.
Clutch pedal out…engaged. Clutch pedal in…disengaged.
I would say that engage means to use, which means to depress the pedal. But reading prior posts, that would be wrong.
If you depress the clutch, you won’t be using it, I don’t understand how some people get a drivers licence.
One of the meanings of "engage’ is to make contact, make a mechanical connection, to interlock parts, etc. When you let clutch pedal out, the pressure plate forces the clutch to make contact w/ the flywheel and connects the engine to the xmission. That’s why letting the clutch pedal out is called “engaging the clutch”, and pushing the clutch pedal-- which releases the clutch from the flywheel – is called “disengaging”.
Yeah, engage-out, disengage-in, but I’ve never used the term myself. I just say slowly let the clutch out-too fast, try it again.