Need some old timer advice please,

Sorta,Kinda,Wasn't popular amongst gearjammers and highway tractors- Municipalities used them-Fire trucks-cement trucks etcx.....

Or its 1978, Max hands you a 3/4 drive ratchet with long extension and tells you to "Get the bell housing bolts out NOW!!" .......

So he's drinkin' a can of Pabst- While he angrily watches you struggle to remove bolts, All in the name of teaching you how to be a man. Afternoon turns into evening- Young man has grease all over his face.arms and legs.... You can hear the top 100 countdown in the background from the radio.......and lil johnny wants to be a trucker, Well, He;'s gonna be a trucker,And learn the Right way..

Next on the list after the Trans swap- How to Do tires, and eventually, Learn to Drive the right way.

 

I know of a big hood A model that had one when I was a kid, and back in 04 when I started running flatbed to Salt Lake there was a guy that loaded out of the Stock reload yard that had one in a big hood A daycab. Maybe the latter one was swapped in later on, who knows? All I was saying is they were out there. I guess I got a chuckle out of the notion that you couldn’t ask an old timer about one.

 

Not having to change the driveshaft is an awful big plus for the auto trans .

 

No, Too early for me, BUT I did get my hair pulled,Slapped and yelled at by the ol man early in my career, made me a very responsible and good driver....

The guys that were out there in the 60's and 70's told me stories similar to the one I posted.........

Drivers Learned EVERYTHING about a truck,

 

I would go with the auto for two reasons. Like you, I have nothing left I have to prove by having a stick.

Second, and more importantly, since the rest of your fleet is auto it would make it simpler to have a driver slip into this truck if the need arises. I am sure your crew can handle a manual just fine but at their point in life do they want to?

I have a friend in Jersey that has done a couple Allison conversions on heavy haul tractors. I will ask his professional opinion about this swap and see if he has any thoughts on a custom software tune to prevent lugging your engine.

Now, if I were to drive it I would have swapped the rear section of the trans and made it a 13 as my first choice or the Super 10 as second choice. That said, I don't have any drivers any more and never will again! It would be a pure toy for me.

 

Does the Allison transmission use the old WTEC 2 controller? Not that those are having power supply aging issues and you need a Pro-Link 9000 do do anything more than reading codes. WTEC 3 uses the commercial vehicle can-bus standard J1939 and will work with electronic engines but I don't know if it works with mechanical engines.

While I personally prefer a manual the Allisons are great transmissions but if you are installing an old WTEC 2 version I wouldn't do so unless you can have someone go in and rebuild the power supplies and replace the caps.

While I haven't used their services; this seems to be "the guy" that the RV folks use.

Transmission Instruments


I would make sure your ECU is the rebuildable type and have the electrolytic capacitors replaced on them. Electrolytic capacitors just simply don't last forever and the power supplies failing on the WTEC 2 controllers is quite common now and a junk yard replacement will be on the same borrowed time.

While not particularly difficult to do, we just don't live in a world where techs learn to make those repairs so the ECUs are simply thrown away and when components with known limited life spans fail.

Consider the cost and effort to be like replacing old air lines or radiator hoses.

 

Auto gets my vote too.