Re-learning to shift a 13-speed EF

I drove my uncle's 12.7 500 for a few months and that seemed to like 1450-1550 cruising and on the hills 1700-1800. His had 3.42 rears on Lo pro 24.5

Anything under 20k in the box I consider light.

 

I leave my fan on when I'm sleeping with the truck idling and AC on, just so the fan isn't kicking on and off for 10 hrs. I'd run the truck with a load on up a hill and see if the fan kicks on automatically when the coolant temp is around 210-215. If it doesn't, that's probably why he installed a manual switch and left it on constantly. Fan should kick on and bring the temp down between 185-200 and shut off

 

My boss dropped a 13 speed in my lap and I had no experience with them. I watched a YouTube video and was able to figure it out and quickly do it like second nature. Here is the video I used, IIRC. Shifting a 13 speed. The thing I did different than the video after driving for a week or so, was not splitting all of high-range gears, like the video shows. I only split the highest gear. Sometimes I would split the 7th and the 8th gear if I was heavy and/or road was steep.

You use the splitter, red button on the side in the video, like a Super 10. You pre-select, lift the throttle, hear the clunk, apply throttle and accelerate. When you get near the high RPM point, you preselect the splitter to low, and when you pull the stick out gear and move to the next gear the splitter will return to low while in neutral and before you put the stick in the next higher gear.

 

And then when you want the transmission to last longer, you will slide the lever out of gear and back in when performing the splits.

 

It relieves the pressure on the splitter while it is in motion. Taking the gear load off the splitter can double its service life.

 

Always pre-select. Then slide it out and back in. Just like when preselecting the higher range and downshifting or preselecting the lower range and upshifting, only you are putting the stick back in the same hole.