Question for the old timers

I drove a couple trucks with the wet/dry switch, but they also had a rotary valve to adjust the air pressure and amount of braking the front axle did in case you wanted a little front brake or full brake power, thought it was a real good thing on ice and snow.

 

Just assumed it was called a tri.= 3 stick.
This Mack had a 4 main, 3 aux and a 2 spd. aux. sticks.

 

IDK, I've shifted a lot of boxes in my day, and the only 3 stick'er I ever saw,, was my Willys. Olds made a car with 3 sticks, called "Lightning Rods". Most owners just left it in D.

 

I wonder if there's been any factory installed 6 spd Mack trannies with with an auxiliary behind it, might be nice 3 stick set up.
I drove an R model doing city work for a couple weeks, had a 300 Plus with a 6 spd, kinda liked it for around town and local.
That second stick made me feel big time! lol

 

Seems they were always Macks, probably because of the ridiculously short rears so many of those trucks had.

Found this little discussion : The three stick Mack

 

I drove a Mack 6 speed, the boss insisted, that aux. stick was NOT a splitter. Really, there's no reason to have a lot of gears with the Maxidyne. Those would lug to 1300 and rev to 2200, and had power throughout the band, so no need to have a bunch of gears.

 

Did you ask him what he thought it was?
Why did he spend the bucks for a 6 spd if he wanted it driven like a 5 spd, unless he wanted the extra revers gears?
Those same low rpm high torque engines had anywhere from 5spd's to 20 spd's. I saw one mack tranny, that was a married duplex, 2 stick and had a 4 wat air splitter on the main box. I am not sure what it was called, how many gears it was or how you shifted it, all I did was see it.

 

The 2 stick, 6 speed from what he told me, was never designed as a splitter. It did give 5 reverse and 5 low low, but I never used it as a splitter. Didn't really need to, fact is, I rarely used the low on the aux. stick anyway. It was kind of a PITA really. That was the truck that shook so bad, I had to have the aux. stick with a tarp strap holding it in direct, because it would pop out of gear. Yeah, put a newbie in THAT truck and see what happens
Mack R-Model Tractor (2) - a photo on Flickriver

 

They were designed to split the gears, we called then newbie (sorta) 13's because they were tough and they couldn't hurt them. they generally shifted sweet, yours must have been worn out. lol
One thing I liked about them is you also had 5 speeds on the pto, you could raise a dump bed in a hurry. lol

 

The monster gin truck I drove was a 15 x 4, both boxes turned around. And by far the funnest part was grabbing gears in high range reverse. That thing could fly bsckwards!

Like those Macks, all the ptos drove off the auxiliary, so we had wide range of winch speeds.