my question of the day - downshifting

Yep, we're getting religious now, even got people talking specific brands of engine.

But come on lililill... you know the old Detroit 318 and other 2-smokers are a different sort of beast than a modern engine. an 14L Detroit has 2 less pistons and TWICE the displacement per piston... You don't spin that kind of mass to 4000 rpm without popping a cork.

Now, I gotta agree with a lot of drivers who will say there's no point in reving over X, because past X you are just burning fuel.

Besides, a 2-stroke vs 4-stroke battle never ends nicely, and some of us are still mad we can't put a 2-stroke in a new truck (or pay to feed it!)

(which incidentally is why I'm working now to squeeze a 53-series detroit into an old 5/4 ton pickup)

 

Sure the old screamin demons would spin a bit faster before they blew... but even the old 855's, 3406, etc. would run 2100 all day without breaking a sweat.

In '92, I got a 0 mile Freightshaker with a Series 60 and a ten-speed. It topped out at 1950. I had a hard time getting used to that one after driving an old Freightshaker bus with an 855 in it.

The new one definitely did not like to be upshifted like my old truck. The lower the RPM, the easier it shifted. And even though it had the same 10 speed in it, it was different when it came to downshifting too. I resorted to the old max rpm downshifting trick for a little while in this truck, until I figured out the sound of the new engine.

And about your old truck... I went to Ohio Diesel Tech in Cleveland, OH in 1983. One of the instructors there had an old Dodge Power Wagon with a 4-53 and a 6 speed Allison. It sounded like a garbage truck coming down the street, LOL.

 

I'm sorry, don't mean to sound brash, but do you drivers that have been out there for a while actually LOOK at the speedometer to shift gears? I mean, I think that would drive me crazy having to look at the thing all day long in determining when to up or down shift. That would be right up there with double-clutching all day long....

 

Nope... I could tell by what gear I was in, and the sound of the engine, how fast I was going. When I stepped out of a truck in 97, I could float the gears in that thing so it sounded like an auto. I was more comfortable driving my truck than my car. In fact, driving my car felt weird--like my butt was skidding the ground and the steering wheel was from a toy car.

Contrast that with the road test I took last week to get my CDL back... um... not pretty. More than a few, less than perfect shifts, and even getting it stuck in neutral once.

Ultimately I failed the road test because the tester wanted me to make a right turn that I wouldn't have done even if I was on my own (school had just let out and the single lane street was lined with school busses waiting to turn left). As I went through the intersection and was preparing to downshift to turn into a parking lot, he started into me about not following his direction and going out of route (after I already told him that turn wasn't gonna happen). I lost my concentration because of his b____ing and was struggling to get it back into gear. He grabbed the stick, stood up in the sleeper and told me to get in the passenger seat... while we were rolling down a city street at 20 mph!

Now it's not like I was driving like a crazy #$$ or anything. He was just an intimidating super-trucker, and he was gonna end the test because he was able to get me flustered enough to drop it in neutral a little too long for his taste. The attitude he had that day still pisses me off.

I used to do Chicago quite a bit and even did Brooklyn with a 53 footer and a conventional once (yeah... I know... against the law). From the moment I walked into the testing place, this guy made me feel like a worthless 0 mile newbie. You know the kind... like a grocery warehouse receiving clerk--the kind that won't acknowledge your presence when you walk up to the window.

So when we rolled back up to the testing place, I told him just that... that I wasn't a newbie--I probably have six or seven hundred thousand miles behind me... no matter how it appeared. He said, "You were doing fine 'til you went out of route. You should have waited at that intersection."

Ok... so now I got his number. I'll be back.