Downshifting

From driving:

1) Brake the truck down to 1000 rpm
2) Clutch out, rev to 1500 rpm
3) Move to next lower gear (10-9, 7-6, 4-3, etc)
4) Hold revs while trying to find the "hole"

Once you figure out the mechanics of HOW the transmission works during a downshift, you can learn techniques to improve the speed and smoothness with which you do a downshift. It's not rocket science, and I have a feeling you are over-thinking it.

Don't bother with double clutching it until you figure out how to actually do it. A DC downshift is really hard to do right, which baffles me why they teach DC'ing from the start.

 

He's a screamer. I don't like that. Ive been a trainer and I don't scream. Hell as a crew boss as long people are moving correctly I don't scream. Screamers are not conductive to good work or training. You are going to damage people who otherwise will find it natural to do certain shifts in specific situations.

My trainers did not scream they did ROAR and that was punishment for something I did boo boo. Those roars have stayed in place all my life so... eh.

 

I did the best shifting when I was testing and they were simply remaining silent and only opened their mouth to tell me which direction to turn. The main aberration in the non screaming shifting exellence was during my DPS road test when I was cut off during a down shift from 8th to 4th for a seriously difficult turn. Lost all my rpm when I was braking and went around the world grinding gears and coasting. Finally remembered that if I brake down to 700rpm, I can skip down a couple of gears. It helps to know the recovery speeds for particular gears for a particular transmission. And also if nobody is screaming.

 

It's the 500 downshift/250 upshift rpm split.

 

Alright alright. With all due respect,and remember I said all due respect. Some people just don't need to be in a truck. You can't really be taught how to downshift. You must have a certain 'feel'. And quite frankly, lots of folks just won't ever get it.

 

Which is why I think Automatics, if in widespread use will be the kiss of death on our industry. Push a button marked L for downgrade work and forgetabout it.

I think not. Ive had two autos before and they were nice, until bricking due to never shutting off (Team...) to dump buffers.