Trouble double clutching smoothly?

One of the worst nightmares I had was being put in a spare truck while mine was being worked on. I did a 3-day trip. This tractor had been driven by a series of inexperienced drivers and the clutch was way out of adjustment. By the time I got back to my home terminal I was ready to go on hometime if my tractor was not ready. Most times all you have to do is lightly depress the clutch, this truck you almost had to go so far you engaged the clutch brake. Remember this, has had been stated, some of these tractors have had low time drivers to beat the heck out of them!

 

Hillbilly nailed it when he said 500 rpm. One shift is 500 so a skip shift is 1000 rpm.

A 6 to 4 makes no sense to me.. It sounds like an excellent way to mess up the range bull gear. Lets say a 7 to 5 downshift because youre coming off a ramp and need all the jake you can get.

Jake it down to 1000rpm.. Clutch into neutral, bring it up to 2000rpm as you slide toward 5th, clutch in a hair and ease it to 5th when she lets you. If the shifter doesnt suck into 5th youve got more throttle work to do. Think of it like the operation board game.. When theres a buzz you retreat your hand. Never push the shifter into raking gears.. Always retreat. The faster theyre raking the more wrong your rpm is and needs throttle feathered again. When youre on the spot it'll just about suck the shifter in. And now youre back to 2000rpm with the jake really working good.

 

Fake it till ya make it lol

 

Grind'm till ya find'm

 

So why didn't you take 5 minutes to adjust the clutch?

 

Trust me, I would have loved to have fixed that tractor that simply. I left 90% of the problems that tractor had out. Unless you want me to write a 4 or 5 thousand word post? About 6 months later I noticed that tractor sitting alongside the fence with all the decals off.

 

See, I think this is what helped actually helped me transition to semi shifting. I almost never coasted with the car out of gear. Brake down to idle, then shift to the appropriate gear. The only time I went to neutral and coasted was when I was below 10 mph (usually bottom of 2nd) and I knew I was gonna be coming to a complete stop. I never understood why people just threw it in neutral and coasted at speed for the same reason as they tell you not to do it in a truck. You're giving up some control of your car and unnecessarily working and wearing your brakes. If you spread the load, both your brakes and your clutch will last longer.

 

I’m on the opposite end of the spectrum. I’m only 5’5”. The truck’s we’ve been using at the school house for our road driving, don’t adjust close enough for me to press the clutch without sliding around on the seat, not to mention, it seemed like my short ##* arms wouldn’t reach. No one said anything about it, until today. The instructor I was with said, “quit acting like you can reach when you know you can’t. Get that pad to put behind you.”

I had been having a hard time shifting, mostly the down shifting, and the slight sliding in the seat was throwing me off.

But hot d*** if that pillow didn’t do the trick lol.

Sucks to be short

 

My exact words were “well hell! I didn’t even know that’s what those were for!”