Passing my road test

I mean in the 2 or 3 days i was with an instructor witch every time was a different one with a total of probably 12 hrs total. i had to get out if the habbit the way i was used to doing it to double clutching. While the old man eould say it usnt that hard.

 

It isn’t good to grind gears, but it does happen. Up shifts are fairly easy. Down shifts are where there are issues. Your ground speed and RPMs need to be matched, there is a correlation between speed and RPMs for each gear. An easy way to find the RPM spread, when up shifting, watch your tach. If you take it out of gear at 1500, and it goes back in at 950, then the RPM spread between gears is 550. So when down shifting, you would need to increase RPMs by 550 to go to the next lower gear. If the truck rolls faster when you take it out of gear the spread will increase, so you would have to have RPMs much lower before you begin the down shift, so you don’t over rev the engine. Another thing. Don’t try to shift too fast. When you increase RPMs to make a shift, let’s say you rev up to 1300. Hold the engine there at 1300 for a few seconds. Give the whole drive train a chance to be spinning at the same speed, then complete your shift. Also. When the truck is just beginning to roll, the transmission is in the low range, you don’t need lots of RPMs. Start in 2nd, rev up to 1100, shift to 3rd, rev up to 1200, shift to 4th, etc. The exception would be if your starting out pointing up hill. You need to Rev higher and shift faster because the truck will slow down when you let off the throttle. When you start out pointing down hill, you would need to start in a higher gear, and possibly skip gears if necessary. Remember, there is a correlation between speed and which gear your in.

 

If you have time during your training talk the instructor into working with you on recovering from a missed shift. It is consistently grinding gears that will fail you on the road test not a small number of missed shifts or grinding.

Losing your composure and not taking the time to find the gear to recover is a bigger issue.

Remember that the CDL Skill Tests are set up in a way that you can't get a perfect score. In fact most 3rd party examiners get nervous if they can't find points to subtract because it will trigger an audit. You may lose points but for items that aren't serious safety hazards like grinding a gear or missing a shift you will still pass.

And yes the FMCSA does require the use of a clutch for every shift and double-clutching too on the skills test but as previous replies show it depends on how attentive your tester is.

Here is the actual text of those two sections on general driving.

 

Grind it til you find it.