dang! Want a diagram of standard shift

The difference between shifting your truck and a big truck is the big truck has no syncronizers in the transmission. If you don't know what syncronizers are, think of them as break pads on the gears in the transmission. In a car or small truck, when you push in the clutch, you are removing the torque from the engine in the transmission. When you shift gears, the syncronizers slow the gears down to the same speed so they can slide together with out grinding the gears. You don't even feel it in a car because the gears are so small they have very little inertial mass.

In a big truck, the gears are much larger and heavier. Syncronizers would wear out very quickly so they just don't use them. What double chutching does is this: When you first push in the chutch, you realese the tention of the tourque from the engine, making it easier to slip it out of gear. When up shifting, what releasing the clutch does it use the engine (as its RPMS come down) to slow the gears down to match the RPMS of the next gear. Once at the correct RPMS, pushing the clutch in again makes it easier to mesh the gears again. Hence double-clutching, because you push the clutch in twice.

The difference between the clutch in a car and a big truck is that you don't have to push the clutch in very far. You just have to push it in enough to break the tourque from the engine.

Floating the gears isn't difficult in a truck because diesel engines run at lower RPMS than a gas engine so the difference between gears is smaller. By lifting a little off of the gas pedal you do the same as pushing in the clutch because once the engine power reduces to match the RPMS, tourque is release. You can freely slip the transmission out of gear. Then again as the RPMS slow down the match the next gear you can slip the gear in when they match.

Something the missing syncronizers does allow you to do in a truck transmission is what's refered to a "rubbing the gears". By applying a little bit of pressure on the stick (not enough to grind them) you can feel through the stick when the gears are coming into sync. Then you can just push harder and they slide right in.

I hope this gives you a better mental picture of what's happening.

 

i would suggest gettin some experince double clutching before tryin to float the gears, i had a student that thought he was the master and ended up breaking the fork in 4th gear from jaming it in, also if its done properly it can add life to the clutch and transmission im at almost 100k miles with this truck and i havnt needed to have the clutch adjusted its still releasing half way

 

honestly when upshifting you will shift to neutral and pause for a split second and then shift to the next gear, its not all that much different from a car, but if u try to shift to fast it will grind

downshifting is where it gets different, drop your rpms, shift to neutral then bump the rpms up a few hundred and then downshift....

but reading it will only help you so much, you wont learn it until you do it a few times, and grind a few gears

but its honestly not that hard

 

I really do not recommend that you try to double clutch or float shift your own personal vehicle. Yeah, it can be done. But you can do some very expensive damage too. And a whole lot easier than in a big truck. And YOU will be paying the repair!

Yeah, if you work hard enough at it, you can tear up a big truck transmission. But it is built a lot tougher than your small truck!

 

I "floated" gears in my 87 Toyota for 240K+ miles. Never hurt it. Taught mom how to shift without the clutch long time ago. She had bought a new 1989 VW convertible. Clutch cables frequently failed. She was able to drive it to the repair shop like that.

Double clutching on a synchonized tranny is an exercise in futility.