Any old two stickers here?

There are levels of driving those boxes...The whole thing about steering with your knees and reaching through the steering wheel is related to another level of two stickin'. When pulling a hill or a steep ramp if you want to complete a shift from one range to another you have to move both sticks almost simultaneously in order to complete the shift and not wind up stopped. To accomplish this magnificent feat you must keep the wheel straight and move both sticks in the correct fashion...Now, If I'm not mistaken most of us were born with only two hands! This is where your knee comes into play. You steady the wheel with your knee and reach through the steering wheel to get to the main box lever with your left hand. You shift the brownie with your right hand and then you go back to business as usual with one hand on the wheel and one on the shifter...Till you get to the next range shift, Then it all starts over again!

See how easy that was?

 

Great videos! That's truckin'!

 

The one thing that the videos seemed to have in common was that they were done on flat ground. They also seemed to all be running empty, bobtail or at the very least light. If you noticed in my previous post I mentioned that it was necessary to use the two handed tecnique when pulling up a grade in order for you to not lose too much road speed between shifts. I have pulled many a hill loaded heavy with these transmissions and have found no better way to do it than to use two hands.

The other thing that is worthy of note is that you'd better shift them sqare and precise or you'll wind up hung between two gears and taking the shift tower off the top of the transmission in order to get it un-stuck! I had an old 5X4 that used to hang up every now and then and the one thing you could be sure of was that it would always do it in the worst possible place!