Another shifting question

^^^^ You get 2 buttons on the shifter to play with!

 

Same shift pattern. You have a 2nd button on the stick to do the split shift. You flip the button, let off the throttle to let it shift the split gear, and then back on the throttle. On a 13 speed you only have split gears on the high side. On a 15, both low and high side.

 

I'm in school right now and my shifting woes are a little different. I'm training on a 13 speed. Getting used to the way you double clutch a truck was a bear likely because of 20 plus years using manuals in cars forming habits you can't use in a truck. I can now go up and down no problem the majority of the time but my problem is this. My instructor has gotten on me for slowing down for intersections a bit too early in his opinion (not too early in mine trying to allow for ds from 7th or 8th to 4th or 5th to make a turn) I find if I wait as long as he wants to slow down 2 things happen

1)I'm a bit rougher braking. (I find air brakes to be touchier than hydraulic anyway)

2) I'm not yet able to skip shift like I can in my personal vehicle. I need 4th gear to make that left turn but oh crap I'm still in 6th pretty much on top of the intersection.

 

Since you are empty, you can make turns in 5th gear....on a typical easy turn. If it was a tight turn you want to be going slower in 4th or lower.

To get to 5th gear from 8th, try to skip 7th by applying the brakes to slow you to 15 mph.....then slide it into 6th. 6th is an easy gear to hit usually. Then control your speed with the throttle. Let the engine slow you down to 10 mph and then downshift to 5th gear.

6th gear is my go to gear for turns. I will brake from any higher gear and then hit 6th gear at 15 mph.

When skipping gears while downshifting, you need to know the following trick. It works like this:
15 mph = 6th gear. 1+5= 6
25 mph = 7th gear
35 mph = 8th gear
45 mph = 9th gear.

So if you want to downshift from 9th gear to 6th, you brake till your speed is 15 mph, and then downshift. Put the clutch in as you slow down.
Don't take it out of 9th gear until you are ready to hit 6th gear, or else your instructor will tell you that you can't be out of gear for more than 3 seconds.....

The dot driving test for downshifting for me was to downshift one gear from 10th to 9th, two times. Not to say there won't be traffic that will cause you to downshift a lot more.

 

That's a nice rule of thumb I've seen a few places around the Internet but they're usually referring to 10 speeds. I'm running a 13 speed with kilometres on the speedo but I have been trying to note at what speeds I hit what gears and which ones I can recover into easiest