13 spd question

bought it from David Strickland in Cana, VA. super nice guy. rebuilt with a 10 as a core was $3000. most shops told me the difference in cores would be $2500 alone.

 

someone mentioned converting a 10 to a 13. never heard of that , 9 to 13 pretty common, but your best bet is to call eaton with the model and serial. i have a truck with a rtx 9 and was told by some folks it could be converted. eaton said that "my" rtx could not be. forget the reason why now but probably saved me a bunch of cussing. search eaton and get their 800 number to tech support. very helpful and free. thanks, johnny

 

plus with a 13 you can make it into a 18 by switching the splitter air valve on the box. However there is a lot of extra torque going to be put thru the splitter box that it wasnt designed to handle. but if you were loaded light and wanted to be able to skip around and not have the gaps so far apart, like 3rd to 5.5 to 7th gear I cant see it being to much of a problem.

 

They look identical inside and out... aux boxes are the same only difference being a 20913 has a few gears in the front box that are higher torque rated.

 

back in the day when i drove cabovers i liked my 13 speed running east coast. i drove a 5 sp. mack that my wife's unckle had to S.C. the 13 had better pulling power. just my opinion.

 

Not really sure why you would need to make it an 18. On the low side, the splits are not that wide. Heck, I don't always spit the top side on lighter loads and flatter terrain. Even running gross and pulling hills, I never get out of the top side, so there would be no reason to split the bottom side. Only if you were pulling toothpicks out of the woods or doing some serious heavy hauling would an 18 be something to consider. I have been using 13's for most of my almost 3 decades, including 10 years in Alaska, and have not really found that anything would be a better choice for all but a few situations. The 13 is a tried and true performer.

 

You could convert it to an 18 in theory by chaging up the slave valve on the side and your shifter knob on the stick... but really its a big waste. It will never be a true 18 speed, gear speed would overlap so there would be no gain.

 

it is just an option as far as its there if you need it. like stop and go traffic where you cant seemingly find that perfect gear to idle in.

 

From my understanding; the individual is talking about the FRO15210C, FRO16210C, FRO17210C, FRO18210C transmissions. They can not be converted to a 18spd per Eaton fullers website.

KH