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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;x1Heavy, post: 8016721, member: 178676&quot;]I had the same attitude that I will never drive a auto either. The closest to auto we had was a school bus type situation with a Cummins and a transmission mated to it for years, it&#039;s not particularly special or outstanding in anyway but it did ok. Not so much on the shifting or ride quality.</p><p><br /></p><p>Fast forward to 2000, FFE handed us a brand new Century with a 500+ detriot and a rockwell meritor automatic transmission on it. It did have a manual mode paddle on the steering column with the usual synbols to control the transmission for parking etc with two differences, one is a M for manual mode. Nothing more than stay in the gear you are in. You can shift it yourself if you like and it will do it. (It might not like it but that&#039;s on you) and the L mode which for mountain work if you had the cruise set at say 20 downgrade with the jacobs in the truck will do whatever it takes to hold her at 20 jacobs or not. It will find the right gear and know what the grade is under it. To wit I have always come down all mountains in manual mode. Donner is a exception. That has a section where you let her drift and let gravity do what it will as you literally drift cooling brakes if necessary.</p><p><br /></p><p>The biggest things are two with the automatic that won me over. First is the engine. The transmission needs to know when it&#039;s time to shift. It took me weeks to stop reaching for the transmission shifter which is not there on the cab floor anymore as it&#039;s time to shift up or down. She will proceed to shift.</p><p><br /></p><p>Second leaving aside NYC GWB cross bronx gridlock traffic, the transmission did a good job in one of our jackknifes on ice. The tractor fell off a patch on a curved upgrade on 40 west of Knoxville and tried to fold into our own trailer. SPouse was driving. I told her to freeze like statue and do nothing with her body. I hopped up on the dash and added a few inches of wheel into the skid. Once the tractor got a hold of that ice, the transmission did what it needed to do with the new slower situation dropped from 20 down to 8 or so and proceeded to climb out while number two stayed with us and numbers 3 through 7 fell into the center canyon, closing the interstate for a while.</p><p><br /></p><p>I remember that moment when the tractor got that traction back. The moment it did, it knew what it needed doing in terms of changing to a better gear lower down and maintaining whatever that foot was telling it to. Spouse did a good job, but seeing that was her first jackknife it would not have gone very well if I was not there or awake to fix it. It was a nice little storm that day on ice.</p><p><br /></p><p>Fast forward. I stayed current until about 2010 as a Crew Boss with ADESA of Little Rock My job was to take a group of temps with CDL&#039;s and assign them tractors to take to the barn for sale and repark it back to the spot. Some of the temps never touched a auto before so I come up there and teach them in a few moments. Push this button wait for that special rattle click then let clutch out with parking brakes off. There it is, you are moving Get going.</p><p><br /></p><p>And so the manuals those temps who have never touched a manual I put them in there bobtail only stick em into third gear and they idle off towards the barn. Usually by the time they get it back to park they are making experimentation in shifting.</p><p><br /></p><p>That&#039;s my belief you wanna learn how to swim? Great. Stand here by the water a minute. Good. **Shoves** splash, start swimming. Quit stressing, nothing bad will happen continue swimming. It usually is not long before they are wanting to do racing from one end to the other.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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