"First Road Trip At School...Any Tips?"...

Glad to hear it!

 

groovy! in all honesty, shifting WILL come to you.. most of what is important at this point is handling the truck - making it go where you want it to go. Make your turns correctly, etc

 

kinda hard to explain,but, i teach break to downshift. not downshift to brake. what i mean is brake to the proper RPM to downshift, then down. not vice-versa the method above works great for a 10sp 5+5=10,4+5=9th
etc...

 

That's how I learned. Break it down to the proper speed for the next gear, shift down, repeat.

 

I agree with what the others have said, brake first, shift second. Basically it doesnt matter what gear your in as much as that you stop! You can always find the gear you want after that if necessary, but if you dont stop, the gear wont matter as much. I have found it easier for me to clutch out of the gear when downshifting, then float it in to the next lower gear. Just be patient, it will come. Heck, my whole class was ready to quit after the first day! We all passed.(that may or may not be a good thing)LOL

 

It just takes time and practice to match the gears to the speed and RMP's.

Try to keep in mind that you will find far more slack in the clutch than you would in a car so try to find the end of the slack before trying to shif.

I have a work sheet that could be helpfull to memorize proper shifting. I'll be glad to email it to you if you are interested?

 

i just graduated from cdl school and passed DMV first try. The shifting part just comes with experiance. You can skip gears on the way down like 10-9-7-spliiter and 5 then stop. Usually i never have to go lower than 5 or 4 in a 10 speed and then just ride the gear till about 5 mph and then hit the brakes. When i started 6 weeks ago I thought i absolutely sucked shifting. Now i can actually shift pretty well. Another note....when i could i would actually go through all the gears on the way down just to get the downshifting practice and that in itself helped alot. I would get an occasional stare from my instructor but he understood what i was doing.

 

10,000 rpm shift to netural, then hit the gas past 1200 and take the next lower gear.