Stupid question to many!

Shouldn't be a problem. I lost my clutch in Albuquerque and floated gears all the way back to deliver the load in California. Then floated it over to the shop.

 

This question and the other one is far from stupid, its very good questions.How you spose to know if you don't ask.

 

Anytime you have to slow down it calls into place.But when your in the vicinty of the shp or con You may not need to be in 10th,

 

Clutches are for stopping and starting. I rarely used the clutch.

 

Super 10 slowdowns are easy, in tenth, brake till the shifter falls out, goose the pedal, slide into 8, brake to 1200, flip side switch, continue braking for another 100rpms, goose the pedel, now your in 7th let it drag you down... after that, decide if you are coming to a full stop, if not pick and plan your gear choice...

 

You don't have to downshift every single gear. This is a manual transmission and it's in your control. I hit this situation frequently.

What I would do is immediately hit my jake brake to decrease speed. As that's happening, apply service brakes lightly and downshift from 10 to 8th. From 8th gear, that should slow me to about 35MPH pretty fast if the jake is on full blast. From there, I might slow down enough with the service brakes to pop it into 6th gear, which is about 15 MPH. This is contingent on how much time you have before you would theoretically plow into the stopping cars ahead of you.

Just go back and forth between downshifting, using the jake brake, and as a last resort use your service brakes. Keep more following distance than you think you need, between your rig and the cars in front of you. The key to decreasing speed quickly without doing anything that will jack-knive your truck, is to downshift into a lower gear and use the jake brake, supplementing with your service brakes. And try to leave about 200 feet of following distance, or 4 trailer lengths if that's a better visual estimate. You can avoid these urgent situations by scanning as far ahead as possible, gives you plenty of time to gradually stop.

One thing is for sure, you slam on those brakes in a panic and you're gonna jack-knife the vehicle. It takes some re-learning of bad habits we developed in driving cars, to safely pilot these vehicles down the road.

 

If don't have time to down shift DON'T DO IT
but as a general rule all good drivers use the transmission to help in with breaking situations
... In touchy situations like thick traffic I ride high on the rpms and sometimes flip on the Jake and try to keep an even flow of travel

 

If you are a strong shifter with a manual that is literally a part of your body without consious thought, you throw the jake in, apply the necessary service braking, this will resolve one of two ways. If intent is to stop, from high way speed, you work through the downshift tree on your jake and service braking while clutching through it's really busy. At some point you have to quit the downshift and complete the stop. And find a low range gear, 1st, second or whatever to start again.

The other sees the highway resolving in front of you by then you probably would have worked from 10, 9, 8 thru to 6. If you are still in the high range you come off the jake, apply power and go through your upshift tree. If you had to go all the way down into the low range you will probably stay there crawling a while then get back to cruise.

If I remember the behavior of shifting and jaking there is a certain gear at which there is no point in continuing the exercise such as for example 5th gear, 4th then 3rd... your speeds are slow and it becomes silly because your tractor is leaning from the power being applied against your drives and snorting. The only time I think back to the rare times you would ride the jake down into the low range downshifting is on a stiff mountain grade where the forces are not as severe.

If you are out of space and time, ditch the shifting and jaking and stand on your service brakes remembering that your ABS will kick in. And you can still steer to save lives.

It's really hard to sit and explain. There are a thousand ways a scenario will play out in front of you. Here is one that I show as a favorite video of one where nothing worked except a severe application of service and resulting battle with the trailer, tractor and so on...

http://www.thetruckersreport.com/truckingindustryforum/threads/great-save.327218/

video

In the end of the video you can see that the emergency is over and there is still speed involved while the driver has begun the recovering of gear and apply the fuel to get back up to speed. He has already made the mental decision that the crisis is over and he is looking for a gear while matching RPM's to making the successful reentry to his gear tree...

Not too many people new to big truck crash problems will have developed the hard skin or so called cold nerves and courage to ride and get back to cruising so fast. They will likely pull off and shake a few minutes with a smoke or a drink etc. It will take a number of incidents before developing a no big deal approach to recovering.

http://ustd.site/3978-2/