Pros/Cons of Converting 9-speed to 13-speed?

I have never heard of nor seen such a thing, interesting.

 

Me either until I bought this truck. Sounds like I should have done more research prior though

 

I have never heard of a 13 speed shifted like a 9. It is unnecessarily confusing to me.

You are going to have all 13 speeds on hand according to your shift pattern.

Your goal is to keep the engine in RPM range without excessive revving or overwork. By and large I like 13's However the more gears you have the more options you have to stop the earth a minute to get the truck here or there. One truck the Mack 500 Superliner was a pure 15 speed low direct and over. That was probably my best transmission.

Another was a single axle dump. Not only you had 10 speeds to shift on transmission but each one had a hi-lo on the axle shifting back there as well. Don't ask me to explain that tonight. My head is not doing well which should clear out later on.

 

Top gear will most likely be the same. 9, 13 and 18 are all built on a similar platform. The 13 speed is (in simple terms) really just a 9 speed that you can split the high range gears to help keep the engine in the powerband. An 18 lets you split the 5 gears in low range as well.

Shift a 13 or 18 however you want. IMO empty its a waste of energy splitting the gears. Empty I completely ignore the splitter until I hit 8th (top gear) then just hit the splitter from under to direct.

 

Well since I much, much, much, prefer a 13 over a 9 did I say much prefer a 13 over a 9, I would come up with a shift knob and switch it over, if it was mine. If nothing else the resale value will pay for it eventually.

 

Scheduled for Monday! I’m hoping I’ll see a slight increase in mpg but not expecting much

 

It would depend on where and what kind of loads you pull, but you may get the benefit of having it in the right pm range at times with a split gear.

 

I dislike revving the engine to 1800 just so it will be 1450 after the shift on my 15 OD/B model. I can’t imagine it would be better with a 9 so yeah 13 all the way.

 

Some of the convertables have a 1.1 final ratio.

 

https://www.eaton.com/content/dam/e...ible-transmission-brochure-trsl3349-en-us.pdf