Shifting

I went to school also and this is how they told us to shift. Now speaking with a 10 speed....Ask them or figure out the prime RPM's once you get to that spot shift and count 1,2 you should be in the next gear. Not to fast but don't take your time. 1,2....1,2...Also downshifting match the speed to your gear. at 25 mph you should be 5+2=7 so you would want to be in 7th gear. 35 would be 8th gear and so on. You will grind you will miss gears. The goal is to be able to recover when you do mess up. You wanna keep the truck moving and maintain control. it may take skipping a gear so the best way to manage that is with the adding of your MPH with your speed. HELPED me tons..Hope this helps you also

 

You guys are overthinking this. It's not rocket science. Just about every transmission will shift almost perfectly if you figure the shift at 400 rpm's from your last shift. For example. if you are up-shifting, and you pull it out of gear at 1700 rpm's, go in at 1300 rpm's. If you pull it out at 1800, go in at 1400. For downshifting, if you og out at 1200, rev to 1600 and slip it in.
Look at the tach as you take it out of gear. if you miss the gear, don't panic. Just get the rpm's close to the 400 rpm point it should have been at, and you'll be close enough to figure it out and feather it into gear. Remember, if you're going up a hill and the truck speed drops off quick, you need to compensate for that.
Now, I know this isn't exactly perfect, but I assure you it's close, and does work with all transmissions. You may grind slightly, but it's close enough that you'll figure the exact rpm difference quickly. You'll find it's close to 400 rpm's. maybe 300 to 500.

But, if you're driving a 5 speed Mack or similar, this won't work for you. For those, you'll probably need to figure maybe about a 600 rpm difference.

 

+1.

I had all these people telling me how and showing me how to shift my 13, 18 and 15 speeds. Finally I went to Eaton Fuller Road Ranger website and discovered that the gear ratios in a 13 and 18 anre pretty much 30% higher with each gear. Therefore the tach needs to move 30% to match ground speed to engine speed. Simple.

And the trick to the 15 was that there aren't 15 progressively higher ratios. I think it went 1,2,3,4,5 < come out of deep reduction low with the blue splitter button then go straight toward the dash into > 9,10 <go into high range> 11,12,13,14,15. I may be wrong it;s been a while.

 

I was trying to simplify if for a beginner driver. Back in the early 90's, when I taught at the old MTA driving school, (yes, I'm dating myself), that's how I taught my students. They pretty much all caught on quick. As I said, the 400 rpm formula isn't perfect, but it works, and will help a driver learn where to shift quickly. Try it, you'll see.

 

We have 2 prosatars with the maxxforce 13 and i cant figure out how to shift the darn thing, very hard to upshift/downshift period...any advice would be nice. Seems that when you go to upshift, ease off fuel it wont come out of gear, then when I get out of gear time i go to the next gear...grind. how the heck do you shift these pos trucks, oh ya simple ten speed. I drive a freightliner with mercedes engine and dont have any issues at all shifting, but I get stuck with the prostar if my truck needs work. thanks!

 

Hold pressure on the shifter as you let off the throttle. It should slip out easily.