Why do so many Americans hate European trucks?

IMO, the best for off roading are TC transmissions

 

Grandpa, by today standards you are like dinosaur, no offense given. Today's truck driver likes to drive VOLVO 780 with ishift and he is wearing flip-flops, t-shirt and shorts made by Adidas. The hands free is the iphone. In the sleeper he has sat tv, espresso machine and hi-powered sound system.

 

Volvo makes Powershift transmission with torque converter especially for mudding. It is used on construcktion vehicles (like A35) and on VHD, FM and FMX constructian trucks.

Really the same conception transmissions are made by cat, alisson and zf.

alisson off road 6 st transmission has familiar for me design, like on russian tanks...

 

but does volvo use allison in its trucks except 4700 on heavy model, for example if you want fire or garbage truck does it comes with powertronic or allison?

 

The problem with torque converter transmissions is when going slow, like reversing down a speed grade the truck will free wheel until the torque converter locks up at about 8-10km/h this can get scary sometimes. Where as with a roadranger I can just creep down. We have 8 trucks with Allison trannys and 5 with roadrangers doing construction and I would grab the roadranger every time, yes there are places the Allison is better but overall the roadranger is better.

 

The Allison transmission has the upper hand on the hills - never looses momentum, but going down hill is tricky with both transmissions. I personally prefer manual with very light clutch pedal and synchronized gears, not available ............ Why ??? I am sure this is the best of both worlds. Whoever company comes with the technology to synchronize heavy transmission will be the winner.... It drives like your stick shift Wrangler jeep...

 

This is how European and Japanese manual truck transmissions work.

 

hm it is not who first offers, it is about market preference, both volvo, scania and mercedes(and maybe even more manufacturers but i dont know ) tried to push them in north america with no success even 30years ago

eaton europe offers syncronised transmissions currently they build only 8+c version for medium trucks

some 15years ago there were 16speed versions for big trucks

but there is one thing about them, they dont have so much experience with syncros like european manufacturers ,
also they had 2countershafts this limits space to create larger syncros so european were much better, although those eaton 16speed shift in to 5th gear much better than zf when they are cold

 

I personally prefer manual with very light clutch pedal and synchronized gears, not available


This is how European and Japanese manual truck transmissions work.

strange to see that syncronised transmissions in trucks exist for more than 60years(zf 1953 although before there were gearboxes with unsyncronised 1st gear and syncro last gears) and americans still did not accept this,

30years ago.....




we are now talking about this...

 

KingQ how is the trucking business in South Africa? How much do you get per km? I know, Durban is the major container port, maybe a lot of containers to move around.