"I had a newbie ask me this one day.....and my jaw dropped!"

When I was in training, the ECU went out on my trainer's truck. I got to bobtail all the way from OKC to Tontitown, AR with no speedometer, no tachometer, and no working gauges except for the air pressure. The Quallcom still gave a speed reading, so we used that to keep an eye on the speed.

I've driven stick shifts for as long as I've been driving. You just have to tune your ear to the shift points on any particular vehicle. Once you figure it out, it becomes second nature. Of course, losing the crutch (tach) speeds the process along...

 

While I certainly won't argue your point here, I have also seen an awful lot of "highly degreed fools" out there. Common sense is just something that cannot be obtained from high school or college.

I know quite a few (older) drivers that never graduated high school, and have done just fine in their lifetime of driving. However, the way the world is today, if a person doesn't have the native intelligence to stay in school, they probably ain't got a lick of sense anyhow.

 

That must have been before PAM went to autoshifts.

 

"Break 19." Go break! "Do you know which direction I'm headed?" ....................................................................................... -Sigh-.......................................................... Daaaaammmmn it driver! *think's to self.* "I hope forward"

 

Yup. I quit them about a month or two after they stuck me into one. I had been there about 2 years at the time...I gave it a little time to see how I liked it, and never felt comfortable having the truck shift for me. What bugged me most was that if you were slowing down...timing traffic to make a left without having to stop, it would downshift through the gears until it went to the low range...at that point, it would float in neutral until you tapped the throttle. If you didn't get it into gear BEFORE you started to go, you'd push on the throttle and there would be nothing. Then the truck would decide you needed 2nd gear when I would have selected 4th...the engine would redline...then it would come back out of gear as it waited for the RPMs to drop enough to go into 4th. Of course by then, you are already committed to the turn and watching traffic rapidly approaching your truck HOPING it figures out what gear it needs to be in to get you out of the way. Between that and the unnecessary shifting...like right as you top a hill, where it would drop a gear, realize you were now on the backside of the hill, and go right back up to the gear it had been in...but of course now the turbo ain't wound up anymore so there's a long pause before it actually starts to go again.

I just don't like automatics. Not even in cars. I've never driven one that I liked...they don't shift when/where/how I want them to...and they sound like crap. I don't care what you do with the exhaust, an automatic sounds horrible....but that's probably a different topic for a different day.

 

"If Everything Is Coming Your Way, Then You're In The Wrong Lane"

 

Which way was that Eastbound bear heading?

 

LMAO!!! ####, I've got me a funny bone full of giggles today. Maybe I've been to #### stressed and haven't laughed or smiled in week's.

 

A guy backed in to the dock next to me, got out, looked around and saw me sitting in the truck. He signaled for me to roll the window down and then asked in broken English if I knew where the shipping and receiving dock was . I explained as well as I could and he walked away shaking his head.

 

Yea, some of those S/R office's are a pain in the ### to find.