Driving technique (need help here)

Ok, so if I,m poking along slowly in say..5th gear ..25mph for my truck... I just keep gearing down and feathering the throttle until the tires grab?
Thanks
Mary

 

I may not be understanding so feel free to straighten me out but, when your wheels spin you are out of control. Backing off the throttle is the first thing to do. Gearing down would put more power to your drives and I would think that would be the wrong thing to do. Now if you are saying that you wheels have found traction then downshifting would increase the rolling friction and that would be correct as braking would cause you to slide again. You would be working as an anti lock brake in essence.

You can control the wheels only so long as they are freely turning. Sliding friction is way less then rolling friction.

 

TripleSix, that pretty well sums up my thinking about handling a slippery grade. Feather the throttle and downshift as needed. A heavy throttle will break traction.

 

I usually stay in a higher gear and lug the engine a little. By lugging it, you aren't sending as much power to the drives. And if I do start to spin, I let off the throttle completely and idle until I regain traction, then gradually increase throttle. I might be doing it all wrong, but it always seems to work. Anybody's thoughts?

 

I have always had luck with just getting off the throttle and allowing the torque to pull the truck on its own. Kind of like when you wheel hop in the sand, just let the gears do all the work, no fuel required. Perhaps since you were in 17th and already had low rpm's I would have downshifted to a lower gear and then allowed the truck to do its thing, once I had traction I would feather the throttle to get more rolling traction....

 

9/10 is a little trickier than our 18spds. Back when my dad ran a truck with a 10spd in then winter he kept the revs up on the high end instead of the low end because of the RPM drop. He always told me to stay out of the torque and keep it in the horse power light foot barely use the throttle. There's a bigger gap between gears least there was on his 400 rpm or so so when it lugged down he ended up right where he didn't want to be which was in the torque. And the volvos he drove had traction control. Soooooo when you lost traction you lost total engine power and created a cluster of a situation for yourself and everybody behind you. So he used horsepower and high RPMS when he was running the winter and going up and down the hills. That's the way I've always done it even with my 18. Even what you were doing triplesix lugging and low rpm was the same concept. Staying OUT of the torque. Torque falls off below 1200rpm very rapidly with the newer motors. Torque falls off about about 1500rpm very rapidly with today's motors.

Its about staying out of the torque many think you have to have a heavy foot to pull a hill. When in reality you can have a very light foot and be in a low gear at a higher rpm and pull the hill. Or have a light foot lug it up in a higher gear either way works.

I've always locked my power divider to climb hills in the winter before I started up them if it was slick dropped a couple gears and pulled the hill above 1800rpm with a light foot. Dropping as many as necessary to keep wheel spin to a minimum. Its always worked for me but this way seems like it would work just as well I'd be a little more concerned getting up around that 1200 mark getting on it a little too hard depending on your gears and how touchy your throttle is.

And watch your boost gauge that also helps to determine how heavy your foot is on the throttle I usually let off when I hear the turbo start to spool up, and the needle start to rise. Don't know if that's a good way to do it or not but its always worked so far. Having put one in the ditch or watched my trailer try and push my tractor around yet knock on wood.
Good discussion though have to follow it and see where it goes.

 

Breaking traction = lost control. Keep your rpms low as possible in the peak torque range. Example an ISX peak torque is at 1200 rpms. Put the engine to work and run 1200 rpms. If you continue to spin it's time to consider pulling over.

I'm curious where were you headed to select hilly I-459 in a snow storm? Why didn't you run straight through town? I know they have restrictions but B-ham never enforces it with a truck stop downtown. Under them circumstances I would of ran straight through.