Can any pros give me some advice on shifting?

You probably were shifting to fast, its not like shifting a car. Everything is much slower with a truck. Lower gears upshift around 13 to 14 hundred. Downshift at 1000 rpm. I used to tell myself "bump, bump". That's what you do with the clutch. Clutch, pull shifter out of gear, clutch, put shifter into next gear. Takes a little coordination. Watch some else shift, you will see that they push the clutch in twice rather quickly, this is the bump, bump. You can practice this in a car. Down shifting requires a little stab of throttle before selecting next gear.

 

Don't get discouraged. Everyone's first time made it sound like we were crushing rocks. It will come with practice. A truck is a completely different animal than a pickup truck is. You can also watch your RPMs when you take it out of gear. Say you take it out at 1400, the next gear will be at 1000 RPM. It is always 400 RPM between each full gear. If you have a 13 or 18 speed with a splitter you probably already know how that part works. Each split is 200. To get the timing right, hit the clutch and pull at 1400 then right before it gets to 1000, push the clutch in at about say 1100 and move into the next gear at the same time. That shifter MUST be moved at exactly the right time or the clutch wont help you. If your instructor will let you, try it a couple times without the clutch at all. Just pull back and when you release off the throttle it will come out of gear, grind it into the next one if you have to but you will get the feeling of a fast grinding gear then grinding slows to "the spot" and if you miss is the grinding speeds up again. Try it and you'll know exactly what I mean. It might be easier to learn the double clutching rule that few-to nobody uses out here.

 

When then the right speed, gear and RPM come together at the same time the gear will go in. So your going to look at your speed, decide which gear you want and then match the RPMS up with it. So what I'm saying is if your doing 50kms down a straight stretch, and you lose your gear then slow down to 30km and have to choose a gear/rpm IS you can choose from a number of gears - lets say, and this is just theory not actual numbers, you choose 5th gear it might match up at 1500 RPM, if you choose 6th gear it will match up at 1200 RPM, and if you choose 4th gear it may match up at 1700 RPM. You can pick any of those gears, push gently on the shifter so that it lightly grinds, and feel through all of those RPMs see where it will let you in. This advice is just for learning and it could get through easy driving for a bit, youll have to improve and learn your SOUNDS/speeds/which gear/ what rpm and use this technique till you can gear perfectly without any grinding.

 

I'm no pro but I went through what your going through 6 months ago.

for the road test I had to double clutch, but I hated it so I learned to do a double fake instead.
Shifting without the clutch is much easier IMHO.

i got into a routine

1 touch the shifter to make sure your positive what gear your in.
2 make a mental note of what gear you want to go in, and where it is from where your are
3 flip range switch if nesessary.
4 note RPM, and think about what rpm you will need to get to
5 push clutch, shift to N, rev up to downshift, let rpm fall for up shift
6 fake pushing in clutch and lightly push shifter where you want it to go and when the RPMs match you will feel the cogs pull the shifter into geaR.


my instructor had a bad habit of telling what gear to go to half way though the shift, it would mess me up cause I had to listen to him in case he was telling me I'm about to run over a civic or something, but it messed me up. By the time I listened to him, figured out what he what gear he wanted I miss where I was going originally and where he wanted to go and be stuck in neutral.
It used to piss me off so eventually I told him just to shut up When I'm shifting

 

You don't have to double clutch for the roadtest^. They just want to see you can do it a couple times and the shift clutch less all you want. I did it.

 

I had to double clutch for my road test. That was 2 months ago.

 

Mine was for bc so maybe Alberta's different.