Floating gears on a 13 speed, question

I think it comes from my dirt hauling days here in Michigan. Off road/off highway work with 150k+ requires some different techniques. Heck, in good soft clay you can pull it out of gear just as the truck is about to stop and slip it in reverse without touching the clutch. Saved myself from plenty of stuck situations that way.

That little blip will also relieve the backlash on the gears and allow it to be pulled into neutral. Part of my left foot braking thing, it allows me to always be in the right gear for the situation. Again, 150k and lots of horsepower requires some smoothness and finesse to keep from breaking stuff.

Trainees are a whole 'nother story. Most of them wouldn't be driving my truck. It's not my truck, though, and I don't have to fix it.

 

Ive been heavy before and that transmission is really fragile against it. If that makes sense, I would wager that many trainees will move on to fulfilling lives trucking at 80K or less.

Off road trucking is where I did use my left foot on the brake once the situation presented itself at times. It's amazing even today how much or how deep you can get a big truck out of using just a little finesse as you mentioned. I suppose a time spent rock crawling with a walking beam mack under a milk tanker was a good education for me in the rain on two particular farms.

Todays trucks seem to me rather weak in the traction department me thinks. I could be wrong, but I miss my old iron. Whatever you had was what you gots and that is all there is.

 

Best truck I ever drove was a late 90s Autocar with Volvo T-ride. It was terrible as far as the ride goes, but I could drive circles around our stuck air ride trucks. 3406E at 600 hp, 18 speed, and 4.30s took some of the sting out of the ####ty ride. The later Autocars were unbeatable and almost comfortable workhorses.

 

Amen on the autocar. My favorites were actually two, one was a old 59 white freightliner, a tiny little thing. And a Diamond T I think it was, or a reo.. I'll have to look it over real good if it is not yet sent to the junkers by now. 13 under drive. half a gear on the many hills in our area in the top two gears which was used most often. I think there was another two gears that could do it, but we never reduction that low on road.

Now going off road with these beasts.. whoo. I had a autocar cement mixer with B&B in little rock for a while. It was awesome but rather... tippy in certain ramps. Someone finally rolled it but good crushing the cab about 10 years ago. What a shame. Ultimately I fall back onto the old Macks. You can laugh if you want to, but if you ever see a mack B laboring under a tree load weighing in excess of 150K uphill in the forest at low gear... it will get it there eventually.

 

Truck_guy. I have used my left foot for braking and the right for the throttle for a long time. I got used to it when I got a truck with a Jake. It made coming to a stop easier. I cannot remember the last time I looked at the tach. Like was mentioned before, I keep the rpm's lower in the bottom gears, then built up from there. I have an 18 speed, so it is very easy to keep the engine speed nearly the same. It only drops 200 rpm. One thing that is very different than a 13 speed is there is not as long of a pause between gears.

 

That mack camelback was the king off-road. Still to this day its hard to beat that setup off road. Many moons ago my dad had a 73 U model 237 maxidyne that's still running local today. 2.5 million hard miles and still ticking. Same with the 71 F model over 2m on it when he sold it. Now it's just a Volvo.....

 

Those maxidynes cannot be broke. I over loaded one once and discovered it's absolute limitations at that weight which to this day is still theoretical. I do not possess enough math against volume to discover it's true weight. It did good, but I have to assume it was totaled because we never saw it again.

 

You just need to "break torque" by lifting on the throttle. You don't even have to let up completely on the throttle, just raise up slightly.

 

You can take it out of gear at any RPM. The key is to level off the RPM at whatever shift point you want and put pressure on the stick and it will just fall out of gear. The pressure needed is as little as a single pinky finger.

Floating well takes a lot of practice and usually months of work. Give it time, you already have a good head start.

 

Camelback and t-ride are very similar. Off-road articulation is hard to beat.