Autoshift Or Ultrashift?

The biggest thing i absolutely hate about them that I forgot about, that is a big safety issue is when your slowing to do a turn or stop light, once you get below 20 mph it will freewheel, so if your starting to make your turn and anticipating the engine to keep slowing you down a little bit more or atleast keep it at a steady predictabe speed it wil start freewheeling and scare the crap out of you cause it feels like you instantly gained 5 mph.

The other big issue is winter, Ive never had to call a tow truck in winter with a manual but ultras you get stuck constantly if your parked over night on ice. Ultras only allow you to start in 1st or 2nd and its virtually impossible to rock them. vs a manual you have the ability to put it in like 6th or 7th and give it some rpms and rock it out.

other thing to is if your in a slide/jack knife you cant clutch it to let the drives regain traction, with ultras you have no options other than prey you can feather the throttle to keep wheel speed equal with ground speed

 

We run all ultrashifts.

Personally I love them. Now some people do jot pu the time into making them work for them. Thats fine their choice same as going from a 9 to a 13 or vice versa requires an adjustment to your driving so will an ultra.

Freewheeling can be prevented by pressing the low button under deceleration it will adjust downshift points and continue until reachingthe lowest gear wich will stay engaged unless you fall under 750 RPMS. At least that is how are programming works.

Backing will take some adjustment. With a centrifugal clutch your throttle controls your rate of movement where now most people use the clutch to adjust their speed in reverse. Took me about a week to adust to the engagement point of my latest truck(they all vary slightly) so I could back with confidence of not giving myself whiplash.

I would stay away from first generation. Most have had the bugs worked out by now but you may get one that hasn't.


Winter driving for me is the same. Never had an issue with being stuck, however the statement you have to start in a lower gear is accurate and I could see how rocking might be harder. I will say I had fun in Jersey trying to pull a hill empty last winter but managed to get into 5th even though road speed was probably 2nd to 3rd at best but slip slid may way up it with some throttle control and effort.

 

To make it easy for you, I put them together. Your attacking my skills/abilities, yet by your own admission, you don't know how to drive these trucks, sure you know how to drive, but you have no desire to learn to properly drive these trucks, instead you blame someone else for the problems with the truck or blame it on "techno weenies". Hence, and read carefully, DRIVER ABUSE!!!!! If you were my driver, and you came to me with your line of reasoning, I'd probably replace you with someone who is willing to learn to drive. I'm not saying that it's not possible that there isn't an issue and that IH is having a problem with, but if you walked into my office and gave me lines that you put on here. Don't care if you have 3 mos. or 38 yrs, I'd be looking to replace you.

Reality check moment for you, Pete, KW, IH, Freightliner, Volvo/Mack, etc., all require a portion of their engineers and designers to have a CDL and be able to drive what they are designing and putting on the road. Freightliner and Navistar have a HUGE fleet of test trucks here in Colorado that they run 24/7/360 some pull dropdecks, some pull vans, some pull tankers, ALL ARE LOADED, and they are a mix of autoshifts, ultrashifts, and manuals. They run them from Denver to Kansas and Denver to Grand Junction. They also work in conjunction with a couple of fleets in there area who run certain trucks as well. Western Distribution has 10 new IH Lonestars, 4 equipped with autoshifts, two of these trucks are equipped with extra sensors that are used for monitoring real world driving when the guys are out so that Navistar can make what is on the road work better and improve for the future. I've talked to some of these Navistar test drivers, some are just that, steering wheel holders with 10 yrs exp., others are actually engineers. Often times, the trucks will have two occupants, one a driver the other an engineer who watches various monitors and makes notes for adjustments. Sometimes they make adjustments on the fly, sometimes they pull over and make adjustments on the road, sometimes they wait til they get back to Denver.

It's like these guys who whine about autoshifts in the mtn's, really, if they are such a problem, then how does my company manage to make them work in the mtn's for the last 11 yrs, BTW, 8 of our autoshifts are only 350hp trucks, the other 3, one is 445 hp, the other two 435 hp. Those 350hp equipped autoshifts run perfectly fine in the mtn's. When we hire a new driver, he spends two days as a passenger learning the paperwork, rails, and depots. He then spends two days as a driver in his trainers truck learning to drive the autoshifts. If, by the end of the 2nd day as a driver he hasn't figured out how to drive it, he get's one more day, if he can't open his mind around it by then, then he's gone.

you hope

 

problem is when you put it in L it will start bucking like a bronco once its gets under 6th gear, because it will just keep downshifting like its a race to first. I was driving team so thats a big no no. only way i figured out to stop it was to brake left footed and rest your right foot on the throttle to give it just a little pressure so that the clutch stayed engaged.

other thing is bobtailing sucks and starting off on a downhill. The tranny gets confused because it sees the rpms climb super fast so it thinks it can do a double shift, but being that you dont have the weight momentum the trucks starts to lose speed because double shifts take twice as long to complete. So by the time it actually has the double gear its lost to much speed and decides it can only shift one gear. So once it finally picks what gear it wants youve already coasted thru the intersection and lost 5mph because it cant tell that it couldve done the double and just lugged it for a split second.

Yes I know you can just shift it manually which is what i normally wound up doing when I bob tailed. But that completely defeats the "AUTO" part. It would be nice if there where like 2 or 4 settings you could adjust to make things so much nicer. A weight switch that will tell it that it can do double shifts, and a performance/economy shift settings.

With backing it was more of a issue when you do a tight 90 degree back when you super heavy and everything is binding up it starts bucking, with a manual you can adjust your rpms vs clutch slip to stop it from bucking. With the centrifugal the only way to stop the bucking is to pull forward and unbind itself. Another major issue we encountered was the clutch abuse shut down. If your trying to slide tandems or your 5th wheel on a super heavy trailer we got clutch abuse shut downs regularly. IDK if Schneider set the ultras to have a very low tolerance but it would go into shutdown after 5-10 seconds of trying to slide tandems. Heck downtown chicago we had a shutdown in 5pm traffic. 5 min shutdown in the middle of the loop. Aint nothing you can do to get it to move other then wait.

 

No matter what ANY of us says, each trans has it's Gremlins. None of them work as well as a human being with experience and skill. Simple things break less.

If you're really tired of shifting, it's a plus. If you don't like being laughed at because your wagon is hopping up and down and shuddering (clothes are falling out of the shelves and paperwork is falling in your lap from the cubbyhole above the driver's seat) you might wish you had a thirteen speed. It's hard to impress new customers with your decades of skill if your wagon slams into the dock and shakes the building.

 

I know that we're not talking about the same trannies,but I have a 6 speed Allison Auto in my Freightliner.After shifting for 28 years,I don't want to ever drive anything else.Basically,it has 3 buttons on the dash,RND and shifts like a car..It's been trouble free after 250,000 miles.I love it.

 

How do those do on heavy loads? I mean obviously they pull them, but does it get hot repeatedly pulling hills like a deuce and a half?

Guy by me is looking at one. He huals for greatwide walmart dedicated in central tn. His only worry is all the back road hilly routes he runs.

Thanks.

 

I never run heavy,but haven't heard any negative comments about the Allison.I run some hills and never had a problem.

 

When I was coming up in the ranks I drove front load garbage trucks. CCC had automatics. Loved them! Alilson. Never broke down. Had one KW with a Sunstrand auto in it. It lived in the shop. My current truck is a Freightliner with a 425 Cat, and a 15 over. Road Tractor double walk in. Just my opinion, a driver with 10 years under their belt is not a "steering wheel holder" .

 

i've been in autoshift, ultra gen 1 and gen 2. we went out and got our own truck (used) this year and it's a gen 2 ultra.

running heavy in the BIG hills out west it runs just as hot as any other truck, the only think is you need to know when to downshift it, if you let it go in auto it will shift to low and you will lose more speed,

backing takes a little time to get good at (maybe a week)

in 8 years of driving auto's we have been towed 2X in snow and it was the stuped singles (xdn2) not the auto that got us stuck, everything lock and all 4 turning but the xdn2 just wouldn't bite.

why did we buy a truck...? because the company was going to move us out of an auto and put us in a 10 sp. knee, shoulder said no,

btw i got my cdl (chauffeur's license) in 84