Clutchless Shifting

You have to be good to float your personal vehicle. The sychronizers are made out of brass and one wrong shift can shatter it. Then you will be floating it all the time.

I had a slave cylinder go out once and I floated home.

 

+1 This was the best piece of advice a trainer has ever given me. I was just about at the point of learning to float gears on my own when I happened to be riding with a trainer having just gotten a new job. He was a terrific trainer and he instantly saw what I was doing wrong. When we were sitting in a parking lot after a delivery, he told me to keep my foot on the fuel pedal just a little as I 'rolled it out of gear' That piece of advice was all it took for me. Basically you want to pull it out of gear as you're coming off the fuel rather than coming off the fuel and then trying to pull it out of gear. Doing it this way seems to set you up perfectly to complete the float into the next gear with no grinding. Or at least that's how it worked for me.

I disagree. Once I learned to float in the truck, I more or less stopped using the clutch for in motion shifts in all manual transmission equipped vehicles. To date, I've seen no ill effects in any of the syncro'd vehicles that I've owned. Yes, the technique is different for different vehicles in terms of the RPM/speed you need to exit and enter certain gears. But once you know how the tranny is geared and can float without grinding, I see no reason to use the clutch for in motion shifts. No grinding=no damage. So for me the question of why float becomes the question of why not float. IOW sycro'd tranny or no, when you learn to sync the tranny on your own, the clutch becomes redundant so why use it.

 

Regarding the transmission manufacturers not liking you to float shift... they explain how to do it in many of their how-to videos... they are on-board with it.

Anybody who doesn't use the clutch in their regular four wheeler is going to have to install new syncros on of these days...

 

Really? I put approx 180,000 miles on one pick up, floating and close to 255000 miles on another with no problems.

Mechanically if it ain't grinding and you aren't forcing it into gear whats the problem?

 

Exactly, if you are not clashing, synchronized or not, no worries IMO.

 

In our fleet we have trucks running at 123 450lbs that have synchronized 14 and 16 speed transmissions.We don't promote float shifting them , simply because it is almost impossible.The reason is that there are shock absorbers that control the speed that you can move the gear stick at.This is so you don't over work/burn the synchros. The result is that you cant feel the gear in.

 

Like a guy told me once. You got to be able to hear it in your ear an feel it in your seat. I float ALL my gears in a Kw 900. I do not do it in my pick up because I once worked for a guy that did an ruined a tranny that way. You could not get it in gear floating or clutching! I don't want to replace my tranny. As far as shifting with the jake. Yes I can an some times do. There are times it helps AND if done RIGHT will not hurt the tranny. Until you drive in soft farming fields you wont understand. Does not matter what you do you can't shift fast enough with out it! You will never get started with out it.

 

Seein' what's out here these days...Would you trust the drivers ability?

 

I respectfully disagree.

All the old school west coast log haulers I grew up with would use the jake to slow the engine down quicker so they could pick up the next gear while trying to accelerate up a steep hill. It's a great skill if you know how to do it properly, the new 3 stage jakes make it a lot easier too. I love watching/listening to trucks pull out of one particular DC I frequent that's located at the bottom of a short, steep hill with a really sharp right turn to get out of the driveway. How a driver strategizes that, especially if he's pulling a spread, tells me an awful lot about him.

Only a moron will do it on flat ground.