Honda Motor Co., Ltd.

Yasuhiro Nozaki

Dai Arai

Naoki Kobayashi

Naoki Sakamoto

Eiji Kittaka

Masaki Yamazaki

Michael Thomas Dickinson

Takao Kochi

Kousuke Tsunashima

Yohei Endo

Hayato Yoshida

David J Wishin

A launch control system launches a vehicle from a slowed speed or stopped condition, to an accelerated speed. The system is activated by operating a switch while the vehicle is stopped. An acceleration pedal is depressed while an up shifter paddle and down shifter paddle are being held in a shifting position. The system launches the vehicle when the up shifter paddle and the down shifter paddle are simultaneously moved to a non-shifting position. The system automatically switches gears during the launch so as to increase the speed of the vehicle. The system is activated until the speed of the vehicle reaches a speed associated with the amount the accelerated pedal is depressed. The system may further inhibit yaw rotation of the vehicle during launch by moderating a rotation rate of the vehicle engine.

Launch control

A gear position detecting device includes a rotation angle sensor for detecting a turn position of a shift drum and a position sensor for detecting that the shift drum is at a neutral position. The rotation angle sensor is a volume sensor that linearly increases or decreases an output voltage according to a turning motion of the shift drum. The neutral position is set in such a way as not to overlap a dead zone. It is determined according to an output signal of the rotation angle sensor and an output signal of the position sensor whether the shift drum is at a reverse gear position located between the neutral position and the dead zone or a fifth gear position turned by 360 degrees from the reverse gear position. Such detecting device detects a gear position with a high accuracy even if the number of gear positions are increased.

Gear position detecting device

In a rough terrain vehicle, at a time of preparing to start movement, in a case that a left paddle switch and a right paddle switch are operated together with an accelerator pedal, an ECU disengages a clutch of an automatic transmission, and causes an output of an engine to increase. On the other hand, at a time of starting movement, in a case that the left paddle switch and the right paddle switch are returned to their initial positions, the ECU engages the clutch and transmits the output of the engine from the engine to vehicle wheels via the automatic transmission, to thereby rapidly start movement of the rough terrain vehicle.

Rough terrain vehicle

A fuel injection controlling apparatus includes a fuel cut controlling unit applied to an engine and a transmission to perform a fuel cut control of a fuel injection apparatus upon shifting of the transmission. A shift state detection unit decides a shift state. The fuel cut controlling unit changes a decision threshold value to be used for decision of whether or not the fuel cut control is to be ended in response to the shift state detected by the shift state detection unit. A dog clutch type transmission is configured to select an arbitrary one of a plurality of transmission gear pairs through engagement or disengagement of a dog clutch configured from dowels and dowel holes. The shift state is indicated by a length of a dowel abutment time period for which a state in which the dowels abut with a side wall of a transmission gear upon shifting continues.

Fuel injection controlling apparatus

A vehicle transmission includes a main transmission, a sub-transmission, a sub-transmission shift position sensor, and a map switching device. The main transmission is an automatic transmission configured to perform gear shifting according to a gear shift map selected between a first gear shift map and a second gear shift map in accordance with a throttle opening degree and a vehicle speed. The sub-transmission is configured to change rotational speed of rotational drive force output from the main transmission by manually selecting a sub-transmission gear position between a drive position and a low position having a reduction ratio larger than a reduction ratio of the drive position. The map switching device is configured to perform switching between the first gear shift map and the second gear shift map in accordance with sensing signals from the sub-transmission shift position sensor.

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Wako, Japan

Yasuhiro Nozaki