Learing to shift gears

thanks , it helps,

 

Do you understand the mechanics of how your gears work? Like 1500rpm in 7th gear will likely be 12-1300 in 8th and 17-1800 in 6th gear.

Think of your gears as steps. Top of one is the bottom of the other. The best thing you can do is practice somewhere flat and get your shifting points.

If you can, try to get rid of the clutch and float the gears, it's alot easier (at least for me) to float vs clutching.

 

On the downshift, you do the following:

slow down, this is best achieved by taking your foot off the accelerator pedal first, then brake a little bit to light up your brake lights to let drivers behind you know you're gonna be slowing down.

1)tap clutch in,
2)shift to neutral,
3)rev it up to 1500 RPM ,
4)DO NOT CLUTCH AGAIN, but just slide down 1 gear, like from 10th to 9th

on a downshift, i use the clutch only to put it into neutral, then i rev it up to 1500 rpm and slide down a gear. your rpm will drop when you're slowing down, so you gotta rev it up to get into the proper gear.

 

I slip-seat between I donno 12 or so 18 speeds.. couple 13s, but mostly 18s. hauling 105-135K A-trains. Each truck is a little different, and I'm no expert, but generally.. like someone else said there's a 200 rpm split between gears. Going up a grade, I downshift when the RPMs hit 1300-1350, giving a bit of throttle as I pass through neutral. If you give too much throttle, then you have to "catch" the gear.. which can make for a slow shift. Then you have to immediately downshift again, or maybe even skip a gear downshifting. Also, sometimes as the hill changes or gets less steep, my RPMs will go up to 1500-1600+, but if its still a steep grade or maybe will get steeper soon, I'll just hold it there. When RPMs can go up to 1700 or so, then I'll upshift. but it depends.. obviously? like if you're done with the grade, I'll upshift around 1500.

mostly float, but sometimes I use the clutch a bit, but rarely ever double clutch.

 

Learing at the shifter is not good it likes to be touched

 

A 13 and 18 are exactly the same transmission as far as gear ratios and the way you shift it, the only difference is you can split (overdrive) the low range the same as you do the upper end. BTW a 9 speed is just a 13/18 with no overdrive at all.

You can (should) pre-select the switch for low to direct and pre-select the direct to overdrive. Pre-selecting means flip the switch and nothing will happen until you lift off the throttle so you will have less to think about when you do lift then move the stick. You dont need to worry about trying to time flipping the switch at the same time as moving the stick, it does it automatically.