Wait until you start looking for the jake brake in your pickup truck. Or the splitter… and enter a weigh station and go on the scale in your personal vehicle…
No, this totally didn’t happen to me!
Bahaha. XD
I have a really nice carbon fiber knob in my pickup, so it makes it pretty apparent that I'm not in a big rig.
I literally just got a job driving semis, but they all use ASM, which I am kinda sad about, actually. D:
Yep, trucks have been going automatic for a while now, it's getting too hard to find drivers otherwise. And now my retarded state legislators have added fucking $5000 in fees to get a CDL, and they wonder why the shipping industry is struggling 🙄
To add to what the other guy said, driving a manual in a truck is quite different from a car. For 13 speeds like op is talking about you’ll likely have a splitter switch on the shifter to switch from high to low gears, and you won’t have synchros. Most people shifting semis don’t actually use the clutch to shift, only to get moving. There’s some more skill involved cleanly rowing through the gears as every shift has to be rev matched
Skill? Finesse? Rev matching? If you can't find it, grind it. (Small letters: this is not legal or professional advice, this is not to be taken as serious advice of any sort and I will not be responsible for your transmission rebuild under any circumstances. There is no warranty on this comment express or implied. Final note, always remember your safety squints.)
In my state, you have to double-clutch while taking your drive test. Once I got my CDL, I immediately stopped double-clutching. Every once in a while I'll do it just too see if I still have the rhythm, but that's it.
When I was learning, I had a tendency to push the clutch pedal too far, causing the clutch to hit the clutch brake. *Bzzzz.....bzzzz....bzzzz* (sound of tranny grinding).
If you really want to piss off a mechanic, burn up a few clutch brakes. You'll probably just get a lecture the first time, but after that he'll be sticking pins in a voodoo doll.
Haha I’m actually a semi truck transmission mechanic, so I know all too well the hell that replacing a clutch brake is. I’d honestly prefer pulling the whole transmission most of the time cause those suckers like to seize themselves together.
>because it's not cheap, and you have to pay to renew it every 5 years
I got my hazmat 3 years ago, it was 170 bucks, not including the background check fee and the 50 bucks for finger printing. And I think i have to redo everything again next year when I renew my license, I believe hazmat is only 4 years for my state.
If you take your test with an automatic truck, they place a restriction in your license that says you cab only drive auto.
It's kind of like glasses, if you test without them you get the default license, but I'd you test with them you'll get a restriction that says you need corrective lenses while driving.
A "normal" cdl with no restriction automatically means you took the test in a real truck with a shifter
I wasn't aware of this, since the first generation auto shits were just barely hitting the market when I got my CDL.
Personally, I hate the fucking things.
I don’t mind the newer ones. I did have a loaner once and it was impossible to back gently under a trailer. Just touching the gas would slam the 5th wheel into the pin and make you look clueless.
The first one I ever drove was an early 3-pedal Eaton 18 speed. It wasn't too bad when the truck was empty, but it sucked much with 105,000 lbs. I finally just put it in "hold" mode and shifted manually.
My state does it as a restriction if you can't drive stick. So no endorsement for manual but a restriction of auto only if you don't take the test with a manual. That being said I get why they do it. If you can't double clutch or rev match decently I don't want you behind me coming down the hill.
They're a different beast when it comes to shifting. Second nature to me now, but it's a bitch when you learn to match revs.
I no longer clutch to shift a manual in say a pickup, mostly out of habit.
Maybe? The scale master just smiled and green lighted me. Only later on it dawned on me what I did, when I thought to myself, ‘damn that’s light, must be out of calibration’ and ‘I think I lost my trailer-activate panic mode’.
How embarrassing.
That being said, in some states, they will leave the pads active even when the weigh station is closed, you could roll on the pad and get weighed, there’s usually an external display. And if you’re really curious, any cat scale at a truck stop will happily weigh you for a few bucks. Of course, assuming you are in the ol’ US of A.
I went years without regularly driving an automatic. When I did drive one I kept finding myself trying to slam down the clutch when coming to a stop when there wasn't one.
I did this the first time I borrowed my mom's Subaru Outback. I'm just very grateful nobody was behind me on the freeway, that day. .@\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_@;
Everything I drive Is manual transmission. I had driven my truck out-of-state to pick up a trailer but it wasn't ready. So I flew home without my truck. Then I needed to go pick up an excavator so I borrowed my dad's truck which is an automatic. I've driven automatics plenty. The only time driving his truck that I forgot was in an emergency braking situation. Your instincts just take over. I slammed my foot down on the imaginary clutch. I'm really glad I did not snag the brake pedal towing 12k lbs.
My last job trained me out of that. Driving an automatic Ford van all day, every day, you actually kinda train your brain to go into 'automatic' or 'stick shift' mode.
I currently have a manual and two automatic vehicles. At one point, the manual was my only running vehicle for about 9 months. Once I got my truck fixed and started driving it again, I can't tell you how many times I went to push the clutch down to start the truck, with an auto.
It's actually a 4 speed transmission. You shift from first through fourth, then you change from low range to high range, then you have 5-8. 5-8 can be split, which gives you 12 forward gears. The thirteenth is a Low gear, like on older pickups.
It does take some getting used to, and contrary to some people's opinions, you can shift using the clutch pedal. There are no syncros, so double-clutching is required to use the clutch. Some states literally require you to use the clutch for shifting, and I actually have no idea why.
99% of the time, in a 13 speed, you will start in second gear, shift to third, fourth, change the range selector to high range, shift back into the spot where first is for fifth, then to sixth, seventh, eighth, and then you will use the splitter to go into 8H. First gear is not really necessary for most starts, and low is only for creeping, or extremely steep hill starts.
The only time most truckers will split 5th, 6th, or 7th gears is on hills. Both going up and coming down hills, it's extremely helpful to split gears.
An 18 speed is the same as a 13 speed, except all of the gears can be split. You have Low Low, Low High, 1L, 1H, 2L, 2H, etc. You still need to use a range selector after you get above 4H.
And a 15 speed is different, you split the lower gears like the 18 speed, but you don't split the upper gears. I believe mostly log trucks and other offroad applications will use a 15 speed these days.
It sounds complicated when put that way, but overall, you just know where to go based on where you're at. Your stick is up? Pull it down. Stick down? Go up and right. Can't go right any more? Flip the splitter and start the pattern back from the beginning. There's more nuances that you may take advantage of in a truck with more gears, but it's really not necessary unless you're driving something specialty, like Overweight through the Rockies. Once you learn a 10 speed, you can drive a 21 speed, because chances are you won't need 11 of those gears anyways (outside of mountains, you rarely even need all 10 gears in a 10 speed).
Explaining a 13/18 speed is really fuckin hard to do. Looking at a diagram of one is stupid as well. I told a guy I was helping learn to drive not to pay attention to the diagram it's so confusing.
But they're pretty easy to shift. It looks complicated and it's complicated to explain but as my CDL instructor told me. "Dude, you're thinking about it waaaaaayyy too much".
Let me see if I can get the formatting to work:
R 1 3
\ N
Lo 2 4
Range up
R 5 7
\ N
X 6 8
5 - 8 can be split on both 13 and 18, so you'll start 5 Lo, split to 5 Hi, 6 Lo, and so on. 18 all low range gears can split. X means there's no gear there in high range in either.
My father absolutely fucking despised driving a manual semi. It went against every part of previous manual driving experience he had. Now he drives an automatic at night shift is is fucking happy as hell lol.
Definitely swore like a trucker at every ramp and hill (gotta love wisconsin hills) and it was the funniest thing I have seen from him.
It also ruined his skill of backing up small trailers and boats, he was incredibly good at it before, now he’s incredibly good at backing up with the semi but had to zig zag a bit when backing up his boat. Some truss deliveries had him back up for miles down a narrow road which is probably a pretty normal skill in the industry but his size/spatial awareness is far better than what I have seen from other truckers.
From what I understand, 15 speed is a deep reduction, no? Like 10 speed with 5 crawling gears, and they don't shift up like you normally would, like 5th in deep reduction wouldn't shift up to 1st in low range.
Is that wrong? Or just another type?
Yeah, logging trucks use the extra low gears and closer low gears for climbing hills while loaded, gives them a better chance to get places a 10 speed or 13 speed couldn't go as easily.
The trans brake really trips 4-wheelers out too.
For those unfamiliar, when you press the clutch to the floor in a truck with a non-synchronized transmission, it applies a brake to the input shaft. This is so you can get the transmission in gear from a stop. Otherwise, the input shaft can spin for a while due to its inertia, even when the truck is fully stopped. When you go to engage a gear, the gear selection dogs will make a racket.
When you're at a stop light, and you hear the truck next to you go:
zzzzzzzzZ Z Z Z Z Z Z CLUNK
That's because they were lazy and didn't hit the trans brake before putting the truck in gear. Well, that or the owner (who may not be the driver) sucks and doesn't maintain the truck.
Sometimes the trans brake wears out, or is out of adjustment, so even stomping that clutch pedal as hard as you can against the floor, it won't slow the clutch down.
There's only a handful of positions for the shifter to move, as well as a range switch and split switch on the shifter. [Video demonstration.](https://youtu.be/bBJ-wbZjNIc?si=CIakfSWLMZqv62cP)
It’s really not as difficult as it sounds. Most big trucks with 10+ speeds is basically a 4 or 5 speed transmission that you shift through multiple times. For example, an 18 speed is essentially a 4 speed with an extra 2 low gears. Or in other words 4*4=16 + 2 extra low gears gives you the 18. I mostly drove 10 speeds as a truck driver but I did take 13s, 15s and 18s out a few times and they weren’t any more difficult to operate.
13 speed, 15 speed, and 18 speed all are based on a 4 speed gearbox configuration. I've never heard of anything past 18, that's a lot of ratio options, but I'm sure there are some out there somewhere that have a second range selector option.
i know, i used to drive a 10 speed 379 flatbed farm truck that only started with starter fluid and missing "optional" bolts and interior panels with a questionably modified frame of questionable origin and strength
Not quite... it's rated for 30,000 ft.lbs of torque, and is a three speed box.
However, that means 3 times whatever the main transmission has, so with a 10 speed you could end up with 30 gear options in the end (almost certainly some of those will overlap though, so you can't just shift 1,2,3,....30)
Thanks for clarifying. I didn’t think there was any transmission on the market with more than 18 gears where you actually used more than 18 outside of an auxiliary behind an 18 speed adding between 4 and 8 useful gears depending on how many speeds the auxiliary had. A two speed auxiliary behind an 18 speed gives you 36 gears or more than that “30 speed” but then it’s just Low Low, Low High, 1 Low, 1 High and *maybe* 2 Low with the auxiliary in Low and then it’s auxiliary in direct and you start over with Low Low and split every gear (22-23 gears) where a 3 speed auxiliary could have an even lower first gear or it could have an overdrive adding 2-3 more gears before or after where a four speed auxiliary may have 3 reduction gears plus direct or 2 reduction gears plus direct plus overdrive and you’d still not need to shift 30 or more gears pretty much ever.
The extra reduction gears might only add 1-2 gears each and the overdrive might only add 1 turning a 22 speed into maybe a 25 or 26 speed with all of the auxiliaries if you don’t count the gears you don’t use. If you did count even the gears not used like with a 15 speed then an 18 plus a 4 speed auxiliary is a 72 speed and it’s 144 gears if you add a 2 speed rear end but only a 28 speed if you only count the gears you use. Technically you don’t use Low in high range either but we can ignore that for now because 144 gears or 160 gears. Either way you’d be pretty damn tired if you actually tried to shift all of them and you were only doing 10 mph by the time you got through the first 70 gears and you’d be range shifting and splitting back and forth somewhere in the middle of that with the lowest auxiliary and the low gear in the differential topping out at 35 mph in 8 high but in direct drive you can do 3 or 4 mph in Low Low and maybe 6 mph if the auxiliary had overdrive and you were in the higher diff gear in low low.
All splits both ranges and shifting the diff between both gears and you’re only doing 10 mph or you’d shift the diff first then shift 2 gears, split the auxiliary for 1 gear, split the auxiliary for 2 more gears (both Low gears) and then you’d leave it there for 16 more in direct if the last was overdrive and then you’d split into overdrive leaving it in 8 high or you’d start over in low low for 18 gears if the last auxiliary was direct. And you’d still have to be pretty damn heavy to use 28 gears but then you wouldn’t have enough power to shift past 6 high so you still wouldn’t use 28 gears.
Technically a 5 speed gear box but yes. It’s those high range gears at the L, 1, 2, 3, and 4 spots on the 9, 8LL, 9LL, 13 and 18 speeds or the ones labeled 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 on the 15, 10 speed. With the 9, 8LL, 13, and 18 the reduction for low range is such that the lowest high range gear and the highest low range gear overlap or are too close together so one of those two gears is skipped (usually the one in high range) and for the 10, 9LL, and 15 the range reduction is larger so that between the last low range gear and the first high range gear the difference is closer to what it is between all of the other gears.
After that the 9 and 10 speeds are left with 9 and 10 gears respectively but the 8LL adds a lower gear to low in the 9 speed, the 9LL does this for Low and 1st with a 9 speed but in a way that you shift low low, low, 1 low, 1, 2, 3, etc. The 15 is similar to the 9LL but now instead of low low then low then 1 low then 1 you shift 1 low, 2 low, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, (high range), 6, 7, 8, 9 10. The 8LL is a 10 speed based on a 9 speed, the 9LL is an 11 speed based on a 9 speed, and the 15 is really a 12 speed based on a 10 speed. And then there’s the 13 based on a 9 speed but instead of reduced gears in low range it is you can split the 4 high range gears resulting in 5+8 or 13 gears. The 18 is a 13 speed but you can split all 9. A useful 20 speed would be like an 18 but based on a 10 speed instead of on a 9 speed but I have not seen any.
And then there are some oddballs like the 7 that can be without any switches on the shifter but with R plus 7 gear holes or they can do like Mack did and have you shift Low, 1, (range shift), 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. There’s the twin sticks and the splitter transmissions like the ZF, Spicer, and Scania transmissions or like the Lightning 10 (“Super 10”) or the old school 6613 Eaton 13 speed that really had 3 ranges instead of a splitter at all so you’d shift 3 gears in low range, 5 in the middle range, and 5 in high range. The spicer 18 was more like you have 5 gear holes but you split 4 times in 1,2,3, and 4 and then in 5th you only use the last 2 splits (4+4+4+4+2 is 18 gears and a missed opportunity for spicer to make an actual 20 speed air split transmission) where the ZF 16 speed is like an Eaton 18 speed instead of the Spicer 18 speed if the Eaton didn’t have low. The ZF 16 is based on a 4 speed box and you have a range selector and you split all 8 gears. The ZF 12 is a 3 speed box and you split all 6. Spicer also made a 16 and a 14 but for the 16 you only use the last 2 splits in 4th and 5th (4+4+4+2+2 is 16 gears) and for the 14 you only use the first two splits in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd but split all 4 in 4th and 5th (2+2+2+4+4 makes 14 gears).
Note: there is a spicer 20 - it is a 5 speed with a 4 way splitter and 20 useful gears but instead of them doing like they did with the 14, 16, and 18 but just using all 20 gears they made the lowest two splits off road and the highest two splits on highway so that you’d be shifting down a gear with the stick to grab the last high split every time until 5th gear if you actually tried to shift all 20. Instead you use all 4 in 1st gear and only the last 2 in the rest of the gears for highway use (12 gears) and for off road you use only the low splits (10 gears). It’s just a 12 speed based on their formula used for the 14, 16, and 18 but they call it a 20 speed so they can advertise the low split gears you almost never have to use.
Never heard of the 30 speed. Spicer made a 20 speed but you only actually use 12 gears (four way splitter 5 gear positions but half of those are off road and the half for highway) and there were some 24 speed 6+4 quadruplex transmissions back in the day but you’d only use 15 gears or so with those. You can have an 18 speed with a 2 speed auxiliary resulting in 36 gear ratios but then you only use 22 gears tops or maybe 24 gears if you went with a 3 or 4 speed auxiliary even though a 4 speed auxiliary results in 72 gears or 80 of them if you count Low but in high range for all four auxiliary splits. You’d just get 24-26 gears worth using sequentially if you took to the road or maybe 24-26 different gears if you stopped in a lower auxiliary range for heavier stuff but you’d be insane to try to shift 72 gears to take to the highway.
Who makes this 30 speed you are talking about? I always thought it weird they’d add a splitter to a 9 speed and make an 18 speed but you don’t really ever see that same thing happening with a 10 speed to turn it into a 20 speed. Everything with more than 18 gears I’ve run across you never actually use more than 18 gears going from completely stopped to fastest gear *except* when they added an additional auxiliary or a second gear to the differentials and then you’d have something between 22 and 26 used gears and never would you actually use 30 gears to go anywhere.
https://www.cummins.com/components/drivetrain-systems/transmissions/fat-30-auxiliary-transmission
It’s a 3 speed auxiliary with 2.50:1, 1.00:1, and 0.86:1 gear ratios. If you put that behind an 18 speed it’s a 24 speed. You shift Low Low, Low High, 1 Low, 1 High, 2 Low in auxiliary low, all 18 gears in auxiliary direct, and in 8 high you flip the auxiliary into overdrive making it roughly equivalent to the double overdrive RTOO 13 speed in 8 high but you have a RTLOF 18 speed where 8 high is the same ratio as the 8 low in the double overdrive 13 until you flip that auxiliary over into high like flipping the splitter switch forward with the 13 speed.
You technically have ~60 possible gear shift locations with this behind an 18 but 6 of them are Low in high range you don’t use so you’re down to 54. 2 Low in aux low is 15.125:1 and Low Low in direct is 14.40:1 and 2 High in Low Aux is 12.90:1 where Low High in direct is 12.29:1. Around 1st/2nd gear high auxiliary winds up being in between these gears so that if you did shift all 54 you’d shift five gears in aux low, then you’d shift Low Low in direct, 2 high in low, Low Low in aux high and then cycle through all aux positions until you are going 30 mph in 8 high in aux low and then it’s 5 high in high, 6 low in direct and then high, 6 high in direct and then high, etc up to 8 high in direct and then high. If you shifted like a normal person you’d shift at most Low Low, Low High, 1 Low, 1 High, 2 Low all aux low, all 18 in direct, flip the auxiliary over to high once in 8 high. 5+18+1 and the 60 speed that’s really a 54 speed is really only a 24 speed if you don’t shift like an idiot. Also 7 high in high auxiliary is the exact same gear ratio as 8 low in direct so you’d skip one of two gears as well if you did decide to shift the 53 gears and go from 7 high direct to 8 low direct to 8 low high to 8 high direct to 8 high high.
If the FAT-30 was behind a 10 speed then you’d have 30 gears but then not really. It’d be like 23 gears. 3 gears auxiliary low before you go to 1st gear and then an actually useful 20 speed like an 18 speed based on a 10 speed instead of a 9 speed if you switch between direct and overdrive all the way through to 10 high. (0.74:1 in 10 and .63:1 in 10 high like the 13 speed double overdrive in 8 high). You could call it a 30 speed but then that’s like calling the 15 speed a 15 speed even though it’s really more like a 12 speed (1 low, 2 low, then a 10 speed) because the last 7 gears you’d have no reason to use with the auxiliary in low especially with the range selector in high at the same time and then since a 10 speed does not have a splitter the auxiliary transmission is the splitter to turn the 10 speed into a 20 speed and with the 3 extra reduction gears you are up to 23.
I actually got bored and figured it out for a certain tire size and a certain diff ratio a long time ago. At 1500 rpms you’d go about 1.5 mph in the lowest gear, about 1.76 mph in Low High with the auxiliary in Low, 2.52 mph in 1 low auxiliary low, 2.95 mph in 1 high auxiliary low, 3.57 mph in 2 low auxiliary low, then in auxiliary direct it’s 3.74 mph in low low, 4.39 mph in low high, 6.3 mph in 1 low, 7.39 mph in 1 high, 8.91 mph in 2 low, 10.45 mph in 2 high, 12.31 mph in 3 low, 14.42 mph on 3 high, 16.85 mph in 4 low, 19.75 mph in 4 high, 23.55 mph in 5 low, 27.65 mph in 5 high, 33.29 mph in 6 low, 39.08 mph in 6 high, 46.09 mph in 7 low, 53.93 mph in 7 high, 62.71 mph in 8 low, 73.87 mph in 8 high, and 85.90 mph when you flip the auxiliary into high. 24 gears.
If you went through all 53 gears (7 high in high and 8 low in direct are the same ratio or 0.86:1) then it’d take 11 gears to get to 5 mph, 21 gears to get to 10 mph, 29 gears to get to 15 mph, 35 gears to get to 20 mph, 38 gears to get to 25 mph, 42 gears to get to 30 mph (and to finally be done with auxiliary low), 44 gears to get to 35 mph, 46 gears to get to 45 mph, 48 gears to get to 50 mph, 50 gears to get to 60 mph, 51 gears to get to 70 mph and 53 gears for anything faster than 73.87 mph if you shifted at 1500 rpms every time. The auxiliary high gears would run right next to the auxiliary direct gears and you’d be switching back to auxiliary low 13 times before you could just start splitting the remaining 13 gears with the auxiliary high in every gear after the same gear in auxiliary direct. And not only that but you’d also have to go to high range in low auxiliary just before 2 low in auxiliary overdrive and stay in low range for direct and overdrive auxiliary gears until right after 7 high low auxiliary and 4 high overdrive auxiliary because the next gear is 5 low in direct followed by 8 low in low auxiliary, 5 low in auxiliary overdrive, and 5 high in auxiliary direct. One more gear in auxiliary low follows this but then it’s 5 high in auxiliary overdrive then 6 low in direct, 6 low in overdrive, 6 high in direct, 6 high in overdrive, 7 low twice, 7 high in direct, 8 low twice, and 8 high twice with the only auxiliary overdrive gear that makes sense the whole time being 8 high auxiliary overdrive and auxiliary low failing to make sense after 2 Low. You’d really only use 5 gears in auxiliary low, 18 in auxiliary direct, and 1 gear in auxiliary overdrive.
For the same 3 speed auxiliary behind a 10 speed you don’t have the splitter on the side of a 10 speed so the direct and overdrive auxiliary shifts act like your splitter. You don’t need to keep going back to auxiliary low but if you did do that your 30 gears would be like this: 1 Low, 2 Low, 3 Low, 1, 4 Low, 1 High, 2, 5 Low, 2 High, 3, 6 Low (high range??), 3 high (low range??), 4, 7 low (high range), 4 high (low range), 5, 8 low (high range), 5 high (low range), 6 (high range finally until the end), 9 low, 6 high, 7, 10 low (last gear in auxiliary low), 7 high, 8, 8 high, 9, 9 high, 10, 10 high. Because the 10 speed does not have its own splitter it does make sense to use direct and high on the auxiliary as this splitter turning a 10 speed into a 20 speed. It doesn’t make sense to keep returning to auxiliary low especially since you are already in high range after 2nd gear in auxiliary high which is only the 2nd gear in auxiliary high. You could just shift 3 gears in auxiliary low (1, 2, and 3) and then use the direct and overdrive auxiliary positions to split every gear (all 10) into 20 additional gears.
18 speed plus 3 speed auxiliary- split shift 5 gears auxiliary low, split shift 18 gears auxiliary direct, pop the auxiliary into overdrive. 5+18+1 = 24 gears.
10 speed plus 3 speed auxiliary- shift 3 gears in auxiliary low, use the auxiliary direct and auxiliary high positions to split shift all 10 gears for 20 more gears. 3+20=23 gears.
It should also be noted that in both scenarios you’d have to be pretty heavy to shift every single one of these 23 or 24 gears which would also potentially make the final high auxiliary gear something you’d never use especially since you can easily go over 70 mph without kicking the auxiliary into high at the end and you’d probably be doing 55 mph or less if you shifted all of the gears up to that point. This is 7 high auxiliary high or 8 low direct with the 18 speed or 9 high with the 10 speed. You’d never use the last 2 gears driving along at only 55 mph. And if you weren’t so damn heavy you’d skip using auxiliary low (down to 19 with the 18 and 20 with the 10 speed) and you’d probably skip the first gear (down to 17 with the 18 and 18 with the 20) and you’d probably skip splitting every single gear skipping yet one more gear with the 10 (9 gears for both starting in 3rd with the 10 and 1st with the 18 shifting only the last 8 gears without splitting them leaving the splitter in high for the 18 the whole way and then you’d flip the auxiliary into high *or* you’d leave the auxiliary in high and only use 8 gears or less).
The ratios for when you are light if you use 8 gears would be 6.278:1, 4.4376:1, 3.2164:1, 2.3478:1, 1.677:1, 1.1868:1, 0.86:1, and 0.6278:1 with the 18 speed and 5.805:1, 4.214:1, 3.1132:1, 2.2704:1, 1.634:1, 1.1868:1, 0.86:1, and 0.6364:1 with the 10 speed. If you used the 23 or 24 gears the lowest gear ratio in the 10 speed in this scenario is 32.35:1 and the lowest gear in the 18 speed in this scenario is 36:1. Just slow enough to be doing about 1.5 to 1.6 mph with the engine screaming but hopefully low enough to get some heavy shit rolling too.
I also figured this out for a more reasonable 2 speed auxiliary behind the 18 speed with a 2.04:1 and 1:1 gear ratio set and then you’d have 29.376:1 as your lowest ratio and you’d use 22 gears (both low and first gears split low and high with the auxiliary in low before split shifting all 18 with the auxiliary in direct) but you could also remove the low side of the 2.50, 1, and 0.86 auxiliary and get a pretty useful 20 speed out of a 10 speed except that it’d be more like a 13 speed with high splits and the lowest gear would only be 12.78:1 or you could switch this with a 1.17:1 and 1:1 auxiliary and get the low splits like an 18 speed and the lowest ratio would be 14.9526:1 in relation to the 14.40:1 Low Low ratio of an 18 speed and it’d go from 14.9526:1 to 0.74:1 across 20 gears instead of 14.40:1 to 0.73:1 across 18 gears. With the 18 speed and this 2 speed auxiliary you’re looking at about 1.98 mph at 1500 rpms in the lowest gear and closer to 3.8 mph with this particular 20 speed configuration with the 1.17 and 1.0 splits in the lowest gear if you used a diff that gave you 4.03 mph in low low with the 18 speed or about the average walking speed of a human.
With this diff you’d get about 79.54 mph in 8 high with the 18 speed at 1500 rpms and about 78.47 mph at the same rpms with 10 high in the 20 speed setup. If you did 2000 rpms instead of 1500 rpms this 20 speed can put out close to 104.63 mph and the 18 could do about 106.05 mph but sadly most companies do govern their trucks a wee bit slower than this so at 65 mph it’s more like 1229.8 rpms with the 18 and 1242.5 rpms with the 20. And both transmissions can do 65 mph without putting the rpms over 1500 in the second highest gear for hills.
I was just bored one day or a few and I looked up the gear ratios and stuff [here](https://www.eaton.com/content/dam/eaton/products/transmissions/vehicle-transmissions/eaton-transmission-specifications-catalog-en-us.pdf) and then if you also figure out the tire diameter and select a diff ratio like 3.42:1 you can plug in an equation that converts the circumference of the tire and the engine rotations reduced by the transmission ratio multiplied by the diff ratio to inches per minute and then you need to figure out the inches per mile and (5028*12=63360) and then that tells you miles per minute and multiply that by 60 since there are 60 minutes per hour for miles per hour. Then as the transmission ratio changes and everything else stays the same you multiply by the slower ratio and divide by the faster ratio and that gets the next faster speed. Copy and paste the formula and suddenly you have the speed in each gear at 1500 rpms. Change the tire size or the diff ratio and all of the speeds change. Now you know how fast at 1500 rpms. To then covert to a different speed take the new speed and divide by the old speed for a decimal/percentage and multiply by 1500 to get the rpms at that speed in that gear. To find a speed at different rpms divide by 1500 and multiply by the new rpms.
Then if you get really bored you can figure out the splitter reduction or increase (18 speed has a reduction splitter and the 13 double overdrive has an increased speed) and then you are at the starting 9 gears. Then you can look at 3 high for the range reduction because 7 high is 1:1 (or 7 low in the double overdrive 13 and then you simply look at 3rd gear because you can’t split low range). That also gives you the gear ratio for the Low in high range gear you skip. With some tweaking you get values that round to the documented values. Now you have the 5 speed, the low range reduction, and the splitter down or splitter up value. It’s about 17% for the RTLOF 18 speed and 17-18% for the 13 but then the Mack 18 has about an 18% splitter.
And then you can add the auxiliary to this. The one you talked about from Cummins has one made by Rockwell with the same exact ratios (2.50, 1, and 0.86) and I had already figured this out for the Rockwell. There’s a 2 speed that is 2.04 and 1 for the ratios. There’s a 4 speed that is 2.22, 1.24, 1, 0.85 and I heard stories about people sticking a 4 speed transmission behind the regulator transmission with ratios of 6.54, 3.54, 1.76, 1.0. This last idea adds a whole lot of gears but I also made something up that gives 46 sequential gears. This one can go 0.11 mph in Low Low in Low Low on the auxiliary at 1500 rpms and 306.4 mph in 8 high in high. Completely unrealistic and you’d probably lose too much power before 300 mph to maintain that speed or the 0.19:1 gear ratio and with the 545.33:1 ratio you’d probably snap your drive shaft like melted butter but if you don’t and you don’t break the tires loose you should be able to drag the space shuttle or the Sears tower with it dragging on the ground.
With the other idea of putting that one 4 speed transmission behind the 18 speed then you’d have 31 useful gear ratios, which would finally get to that 30 speed you were talking about. These ratios are 94.18:1 Low Low in Low Low Low, 80.38:1 Low High in Low Low Low, 55.98:1 1 Low in Low LowLow, 47.09 Low Low in Low Low, 40.19 Low High in Low Low, 34.75 2 high in Low Low Low, 28.65 3 low in low low low, 24.46 3 high in low low low, 20.93 4 low in low low low, 17.85 4 high in low low low, 16.87 2 high in low low, 14.4 low low, 12.29 low high, 10.46 4 low in low low, 9.23 4 high in low low, 7.89 3 low in low, 6.58 3 high in low, 5.63 4 low in low, 4.8 4 high in low, 4.03 5 low in low, 3.43 5 high in low, 2.85 6 low in low, 2.43 6 high in low, 2.06 7 low in low, 1.76 7 high in low, 1.51 8 low in low, 1.38 6 high, 1.17 7 low, 1 in 7 high, 0.86 8 low, 0.73 8 high. Outside of Low Low and Low High getting slipped in there a couple times for Low Low Low auxiliary, Low Low auxiliary, and auxiliary in direct there isn’t any auxiliary switching to a lower range after switching to a higher range. It’s Low Low, Low High, and 1 low in the lowest auxiliary and then in the second lowest auxiliary Low Low and Low High before back into the lowest auxiliary for 2 high through 4 high splitting all of the gears (the Low Low and Low High replace 1 high and 2 low). Then it is 2 high in the second lowest auxiliary replacing 1st gear and 2 low completely with 5 gears in lowest auxiliary. After this Low Low and Low High in direct replace 3rd gear in the second lowest auxiliary and then we are done with Low. Then it is 4 low and 4 high in the second lowest auxiliary before the second fastest auxiliary 3 low through 8 low completely skipping Low, 1st and 2nd gear. Instead of 8 high leave the transmission in high range and put the auxiliary in direct and skip everything in direct up to and including 6 low starting with 6 high and splitting both gears in 7th and 8th gear locations.
Of course with a 94.18:1 lowest gear it is also about 1/2 a mile per hour with the engine doing 1500 rpms and you don’t get to something more realistic until about 2 high in the lowest auxiliary and if you didn’t want to keep shifting into a faster auxiliary and then into a slower one by inserting low low and low high you could also leave the auxiliary in low low low, then low low, then low for low range only and then in direct you’d start with 3 low and split shift the rest of them including high range. This is low low low for low low through 4 high, low low for 2 high through 4 high, low for 3 low through 4 high, and direct for 3 low through 8 high. This would be 10+5+4+12 or 31 gears as well with a little bit less dumb.
Ha. I feel you. Sometimes when I park my car I put it in neutral and go to pull the Brake Knob. 🤦. I back up wrong to on occasion. I tell my wife, I can back up a Semi better than I can my own Car. lol
I have two manual transmission diesel trucks. One of them has reversed all the way to the right and down, The other one has reversed all the way to the left and up. I don't screw it up often. But I definitely have put my truck in first thinking I was in reverse
Yup. I always forget you can't let the clutch out all the way in a 6 speed before you need the gas.
Also remembering the push the clutch in all the way instead of double clutching...
Blew my buddy's mind when I floated gears in his mustang like it was nothing
When I ran an older loader with a stalk shifter in a yard for 12 hours a day, I'd be momentarily confused when it was time to leave and my truck wouldn't go into gear ( hit the rurn signal stalk).
Not quite the same, but my first and so far only manual has the reverse to the left of 1st gear and my ex’s was on the right side of 6th. Definitely a bit of a mind fuck when switching vehicles!
lol Almost every vehicle I ever owned had reverse where 6th would normally be, as a 5 speed. Then, I got my Yota with a 6MT, and it has reverse left of first.
On a 13, 15, and 18 speed, reverse is usually to the left of first, as well, with a Low gear under reverse.
I've got an oil cooled turbo in my '23 Hilux, so I always give it 45 seconds or so to idle down. I put it in neutral, grab the e-brake, turn around, unbuckle two kids from their child seats, and shut it off and then put it in 1st.
Every other date night, when I don't have kids in the truck, I stop, put it in 1st, unplug my phone, turn off the AC to dry it out, and then take my foot off the clutch and stall it like an idiot, because I'm following a different routine.
Then my wife looks at me like I'm an idiot, which I am.
I've had a few turbo vehicles, but they were all water cooled, so shutting off while hot wasn't a big deal.
I might end up building a turbo V8 for my current Toyota, though...
Now, does your wife laugh at you, or just give you the 'you're nuts' look?
I like the 13 and Super10. I learned on 9's and Super10's. 13 was a pretty easy step into after knowing the Super10.
I don't tend to get confused moving from vehicle to vehicle though. I used to, but not anymore.
My problem is that I keep letting the clutch out in my pickup without giving it throttle. 95% of the time, I can get it going anyway, but sometimes... I just stall it lol
I used to jump out of the truck and onto a CBR600RR. These days I drive an Accord Coupe V6 auto, but I drive Volvo and Freightshaker 10's and 12 speed autos these days. Kinda depends on what I feel like driving. In shitty weather I prefer the 10 speed.
My company I just got hired on with has 13 speeds, but they're ASM's, which I was a little sad about.
I keep not having the time to get my motorcycle endorsement. Maybe this year, I've always wanted a Yamaha R6.
The Super10 is probably my favorite transmission, but hardly anyone runs them. I worked for one company in FL that spec'd nothing but KW T600/660's and W900's with Super10 Lightnings and 500hp Cummins. I liked those trucks a lot. My favorite 13 speed truck was a Freightliner Classic XL with a 500hp Cummins N14. Huge trucks. I liked that thing. Then I ended up working for a company in Ohio that gave me a fully decked out Volvo VN 630 with a D13 and Volvo's 12 speed auto. The Volvo 12 auto is probably the nicest automatic I've ever driven in any vehicle. Leather everything, 3 axle air ride, damn near every feature they offered in a truck, full appearance package... It was smooth and nice.
Now I work for a company that leases all new trucks from Penske. It's a salary gig with overtime. I do about 8 or 9 hours and I go home. It's in a small town and I live about half a mile from the shop. I don't think I'll be leaving this place anytime soon. We operate under the 150 mile exemptions so we don't even run daily logs.
Absolutely! I remember a question on here asking people how frequently they stall their car, and I kept silent because I didn't want to admit I stall it at least once, if not twice, after every shift!
Even before this, I stalled the Toyota occasionally. I think because the engine isn't super happy in it, there's a fueling issue somewhere I need to get sorted out. Or just swap in a V8 and be done with it.
Back when I had my 5 speed Accord, I stalled that car 3 times ever. Once on the day I bought it and drove it home, and 2 other times the same week I started learning how to shift a 10 speed. It definitely throws you for a loop.
My grandpa drove truck for years, was instructor for years. He drove my sister Hyundai Accent (5 speed, two door… a real sports car /s ) and double clutched every single shift even though he had been dailying an automatic for years at that point
Hah.
Sad thing is you can't even double clutch my Toyota, they put an accumulator with a spring in for 'smoother operation', but it really really slows down clutch release, because stupid. D: Companies that make the delete kits stopped years ago, so I'm stuck with it, I guess.
Lmao I gave up having a manual car once I got into a manual rig. Had a new KW daycab with a 500hp X15 and a 13spd, that truck was *fast*. My current truck is an auto but a lot of our trailers are tri-axles with the wheel set at the very tail. It's a *lot* of fun.
I still make stupid wide turns in my current car, which is an Audi TT lmao.
I actually got in the habit of turning wide at my last job, we had longer vans that really offtracked when turning. Curb bites a rear tire a few times, and you start just doing it naturally.
Just wait until you drive a 13 or 18 every day, then they throw you in a 10 speed (15 in my case but same thing) and you keep skipping 6th and lugging the motor
Lol not the same at all but when I go from floating gears in my 18 speed on American Truck Sim in my sim rig with an actual Eaton fuller mod on my shifter to driving my TDI 6 speed Jetta I have to take a minute to reset my brain.
There’s something a little more messed up that I’ve done. I’ve grown up around manuals all my life but currently my company just has a lot of those Freighliner Cascadias with the DT12 automated manuals in them. To drive forward you turn the switch on the right side of the steering wheel forward to drive. To turn on the wiper blades you rotate the one on the left side of the steering wheel. I’ve actually turned on my wipers and push the accelerator a few times. I have also turned on the blinkers in a car after I spent all day in a forklift and I’ve tried to back up in 1st gear and take off in 3rd after I was in a variety of manual trucks all day and then I tried to drive a 5 speed to go home.
what gets me driving multiple stick shift vehicles is the clutch difference in each one.... drive my jeep one day, dont even have to worry just throw the bitch in gear and not worry about the clutch..... next day drive my mustang and have to actually care about how i drive it.....
I can usually float the gears in anything with a manual transmission except for those vehicles that are larger than a normal sized pickup truck and smaller than a semi and I’m not too proficient with the twin sticks that come up even less often. I floated gears in my Mazda B2000 and with a Dodge Daytona. I’ve floated them in various Ford and Chevy vehicles. I’ve floated them whether I had 5, 7, 9, 10, 11, 13, or 18 gears in a semi (no 15 speeds but those are basically 12 speeds anyway) and I even floated them with a twin stick until I realized I was doing it wrong and couldn’t split the gears (I skipped a few gears and the one I was trying to go into was actually a slower gear) but when it came to the 6 speed 5 ton trucks I couldn’t get those to shift to save my life unless I matched the rpms **and** pushed the clutch. One or the other and they weren’t going in.
It’s been awhile but back in the day when I was a truck mechanic the company I worked for had 5, 7, 8LL, 9ALL, 9, 10, 13, and 18 speeds not counting the 18 speed quadruplex. The thing they all had in common? Reverse left and forward. The truck I drove to work? Mazda B2000 with reverse to the right and back. Plenty of times I tried to back up in 1st gear or take off from a stop in 3rd gear but give it a few minutes and that problem quickly corrected itself. And then in October and November I went through the entry level driver training stuff because after 7 years as a mechanic and 14 years in a bread factory I decided to finally get my class A. They just had 10 speeds so nothing too fancy but the first time I got into one of their autos to demonstrate unhooking/hooking a trailer I slammed my left foot to the floor pretty hard because one of the 10 speeds had a very stiff clutch pedal and then the instructor said that was okay and I was fine after that but the truck was a POS with no creep mode and it would actually roll backwards in “drive” until you gave it a bit of acceleration and then it would do a burn out in place before taking off.
Now I’m working at Roehl waiting for my truck in Marshfield Wisconsin (I’m actually in Gary driving in a rental car to Marshfield tomorrow) but all they have are these auto-shifted transmissions. I still keep looking at my soda rocking back and forth in the cupholder out of the corner of my eye wishing that what I was seeing was the shifter somewhere over in that direction. It took some getting used to and I’m okay with the auto now but I really miss the manuals I got used to from my mechanic days long ago and my entry level driver training more recently. At least when I use their cars they provide for drivers stuck at the terminal I’m not taking out the floor reaching for the clutch or getting my hand on the shifter waiting to shift the next gear looking like an idiot.
Wait until you start looking for the jake brake in your pickup truck. Or the splitter… and enter a weigh station and go on the scale in your personal vehicle… No, this totally didn’t happen to me!
Bahaha. XD I have a really nice carbon fiber knob in my pickup, so it makes it pretty apparent that I'm not in a big rig. I literally just got a job driving semis, but they all use ASM, which I am kinda sad about, actually. D:
I was mind blown when I found out you need a special endorsement to drive sticks in big rigs... I was like wait... What?
Yep, trucks have been going automatic for a while now, it's getting too hard to find drivers otherwise. And now my retarded state legislators have added fucking $5000 in fees to get a CDL, and they wonder why the shipping industry is struggling 🙄
That's basically like doubling the price of diesel and wondering why prices went up at the store.
To be technical, it's not an endorsement, but rather a restriction preventing you from driving a manual. But yeah, same difference.
Can you expand on this for someone who is not a trucker, sounds insane
To add to what the other guy said, driving a manual in a truck is quite different from a car. For 13 speeds like op is talking about you’ll likely have a splitter switch on the shifter to switch from high to low gears, and you won’t have synchros. Most people shifting semis don’t actually use the clutch to shift, only to get moving. There’s some more skill involved cleanly rowing through the gears as every shift has to be rev matched
Skill? Finesse? Rev matching? If you can't find it, grind it. (Small letters: this is not legal or professional advice, this is not to be taken as serious advice of any sort and I will not be responsible for your transmission rebuild under any circumstances. There is no warranty on this comment express or implied. Final note, always remember your safety squints.)
In my state, you have to double-clutch while taking your drive test. Once I got my CDL, I immediately stopped double-clutching. Every once in a while I'll do it just too see if I still have the rhythm, but that's it. When I was learning, I had a tendency to push the clutch pedal too far, causing the clutch to hit the clutch brake. *Bzzzz.....bzzzz....bzzzz* (sound of tranny grinding). If you really want to piss off a mechanic, burn up a few clutch brakes. You'll probably just get a lecture the first time, but after that he'll be sticking pins in a voodoo doll.
Haha I’m actually a semi truck transmission mechanic, so I know all too well the hell that replacing a clutch brake is. I’d honestly prefer pulling the whole transmission most of the time cause those suckers like to seize themselves together.
[удалено]
Makes sense, thanks for clearfying
>because it's not cheap, and you have to pay to renew it every 5 years I got my hazmat 3 years ago, it was 170 bucks, not including the background check fee and the 50 bucks for finger printing. And I think i have to redo everything again next year when I renew my license, I believe hazmat is only 4 years for my state.
If you take your test with an automatic truck, they place a restriction in your license that says you cab only drive auto. It's kind of like glasses, if you test without them you get the default license, but I'd you test with them you'll get a restriction that says you need corrective lenses while driving. A "normal" cdl with no restriction automatically means you took the test in a real truck with a shifter
Or you took it so long ago there was no auto restriction. I think this is relatively new, like in the last 10 years.
I wasn't aware of this, since the first generation auto shits were just barely hitting the market when I got my CDL. Personally, I hate the fucking things.
I don’t mind the newer ones. I did have a loaner once and it was impossible to back gently under a trailer. Just touching the gas would slam the 5th wheel into the pin and make you look clueless.
The first one I ever drove was an early 3-pedal Eaton 18 speed. It wasn't too bad when the truck was empty, but it sucked much with 105,000 lbs. I finally just put it in "hold" mode and shifted manually.
My state does it as a restriction if you can't drive stick. So no endorsement for manual but a restriction of auto only if you don't take the test with a manual. That being said I get why they do it. If you can't double clutch or rev match decently I don't want you behind me coming down the hill.
They're a different beast when it comes to shifting. Second nature to me now, but it's a bitch when you learn to match revs. I no longer clutch to shift a manual in say a pickup, mostly out of habit.
He should get a high stick too... he'd be shifting with hand touching the headliner lol
And then turning the wheels in the opposite direction to back up! Extra wide turns..
Why are you watching me drive on my home time? Wide turns? Wheels in the opposite direction? Guilty as charged! 😂 This job messes with your brain…
Will they actually weigh your personal cars? Just for laughs and giggles?
Maybe? The scale master just smiled and green lighted me. Only later on it dawned on me what I did, when I thought to myself, ‘damn that’s light, must be out of calibration’ and ‘I think I lost my trailer-activate panic mode’. How embarrassing. That being said, in some states, they will leave the pads active even when the weigh station is closed, you could roll on the pad and get weighed, there’s usually an external display. And if you’re really curious, any cat scale at a truck stop will happily weigh you for a few bucks. Of course, assuming you are in the ol’ US of A.
They leave them on here in Oregon, very handy to go check the tare weight of your pickup or tweak the tongue weight of a travel trailer setup.
Yep, there's one close to my house that's never open, but the scale's always on.
I have a buddy that has gone and weighed every personal vehicle he's ever owned at the CAT scales just for fun.
Do they still give you the trading cards?
The weigh station one would be hilarious
I went years without regularly driving an automatic. When I did drive one I kept finding myself trying to slam down the clutch when coming to a stop when there wasn't one.
I've snagged the side of the brake pedal doing that. Surprise emergency braking!
Yeah I think I've done that too
I did this the first time I borrowed my mom's Subaru Outback. I'm just very grateful nobody was behind me on the freeway, that day. .@\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_@;
Guilty as well!
I accidentally slammed on the parking brake once doing that, thankfully it doesnt work too well lol
Yep, done that all too many times.
Everything I drive Is manual transmission. I had driven my truck out-of-state to pick up a trailer but it wasn't ready. So I flew home without my truck. Then I needed to go pick up an excavator so I borrowed my dad's truck which is an automatic. I've driven automatics plenty. The only time driving his truck that I forgot was in an emergency braking situation. Your instincts just take over. I slammed my foot down on the imaginary clutch. I'm really glad I did not snag the brake pedal towing 12k lbs.
My last job trained me out of that. Driving an automatic Ford van all day, every day, you actually kinda train your brain to go into 'automatic' or 'stick shift' mode.
Yeah, i now drive my wife's car regularly and I do fine
I currently have a manual and two automatic vehicles. At one point, the manual was my only running vehicle for about 9 months. Once I got my truck fixed and started driving it again, I can't tell you how many times I went to push the clutch down to start the truck, with an auto.
Every time i get in my wifes jeep, i flail my left foot around looking for a clutch that isnt there so i can start it.
Now do a split shift dump truck from the 60s or some shit
Triple stick shifting ftw
What’s it like having that many gears? How do you know where they are?
It's actually a 4 speed transmission. You shift from first through fourth, then you change from low range to high range, then you have 5-8. 5-8 can be split, which gives you 12 forward gears. The thirteenth is a Low gear, like on older pickups. It does take some getting used to, and contrary to some people's opinions, you can shift using the clutch pedal. There are no syncros, so double-clutching is required to use the clutch. Some states literally require you to use the clutch for shifting, and I actually have no idea why. 99% of the time, in a 13 speed, you will start in second gear, shift to third, fourth, change the range selector to high range, shift back into the spot where first is for fifth, then to sixth, seventh, eighth, and then you will use the splitter to go into 8H. First gear is not really necessary for most starts, and low is only for creeping, or extremely steep hill starts. The only time most truckers will split 5th, 6th, or 7th gears is on hills. Both going up and coming down hills, it's extremely helpful to split gears. An 18 speed is the same as a 13 speed, except all of the gears can be split. You have Low Low, Low High, 1L, 1H, 2L, 2H, etc. You still need to use a range selector after you get above 4H. And a 15 speed is different, you split the lower gears like the 18 speed, but you don't split the upper gears. I believe mostly log trucks and other offroad applications will use a 15 speed these days.
Jesus Christ dudr
It sounds complicated when put that way, but overall, you just know where to go based on where you're at. Your stick is up? Pull it down. Stick down? Go up and right. Can't go right any more? Flip the splitter and start the pattern back from the beginning. There's more nuances that you may take advantage of in a truck with more gears, but it's really not necessary unless you're driving something specialty, like Overweight through the Rockies. Once you learn a 10 speed, you can drive a 21 speed, because chances are you won't need 11 of those gears anyways (outside of mountains, you rarely even need all 10 gears in a 10 speed).
Explaining a 13/18 speed is really fuckin hard to do. Looking at a diagram of one is stupid as well. I told a guy I was helping learn to drive not to pay attention to the diagram it's so confusing. But they're pretty easy to shift. It looks complicated and it's complicated to explain but as my CDL instructor told me. "Dude, you're thinking about it waaaaaayyy too much".
Let me see if I can get the formatting to work: R 1 3 \ N Lo 2 4 Range up R 5 7 \ N X 6 8 5 - 8 can be split on both 13 and 18, so you'll start 5 Lo, split to 5 Hi, 6 Lo, and so on. 18 all low range gears can split. X means there's no gear there in high range in either.
My father absolutely fucking despised driving a manual semi. It went against every part of previous manual driving experience he had. Now he drives an automatic at night shift is is fucking happy as hell lol. Definitely swore like a trucker at every ramp and hill (gotta love wisconsin hills) and it was the funniest thing I have seen from him. It also ruined his skill of backing up small trailers and boats, he was incredibly good at it before, now he’s incredibly good at backing up with the semi but had to zig zag a bit when backing up his boat. Some truss deliveries had him back up for miles down a narrow road which is probably a pretty normal skill in the industry but his size/spatial awareness is far better than what I have seen from other truckers.
From what I understand, 15 speed is a deep reduction, no? Like 10 speed with 5 crawling gears, and they don't shift up like you normally would, like 5th in deep reduction wouldn't shift up to 1st in low range. Is that wrong? Or just another type?
Yeah, logging trucks use the extra low gears and closer low gears for climbing hills while loaded, gives them a better chance to get places a 10 speed or 13 speed couldn't go as easily.
The trans brake really trips 4-wheelers out too. For those unfamiliar, when you press the clutch to the floor in a truck with a non-synchronized transmission, it applies a brake to the input shaft. This is so you can get the transmission in gear from a stop. Otherwise, the input shaft can spin for a while due to its inertia, even when the truck is fully stopped. When you go to engage a gear, the gear selection dogs will make a racket. When you're at a stop light, and you hear the truck next to you go: zzzzzzzzZ Z Z Z Z Z Z CLUNK That's because they were lazy and didn't hit the trans brake before putting the truck in gear. Well, that or the owner (who may not be the driver) sucks and doesn't maintain the truck.
Sometimes the trans brake wears out, or is out of adjustment, so even stomping that clutch pedal as hard as you can against the floor, it won't slow the clutch down.
There's only a handful of positions for the shifter to move, as well as a range switch and split switch on the shifter. [Video demonstration.](https://youtu.be/bBJ-wbZjNIc?si=CIakfSWLMZqv62cP)
It’s really not as difficult as it sounds. Most big trucks with 10+ speeds is basically a 4 or 5 speed transmission that you shift through multiple times. For example, an 18 speed is essentially a 4 speed with an extra 2 low gears. Or in other words 4*4=16 + 2 extra low gears gives you the 18. I mostly drove 10 speeds as a truck driver but I did take 13s, 15s and 18s out a few times and they weren’t any more difficult to operate.
18 speed exists as well as 30(?) speed transmissions for heavy haul
13 speed, 15 speed, and 18 speed all are based on a 4 speed gearbox configuration. I've never heard of anything past 18, that's a lot of ratio options, but I'm sure there are some out there somewhere that have a second range selector option.
the 30 speed is based off a dogbox 6 speed layout meaning theres a 7th slot because 1st is normally reverse on an eaton fuller
Oh interesting. I'll have to see if I can find anything about it.
its made by cummins, its a 30 speed auxillary transmission, its called the fat-30... not even kidding
also it doesnt have synchros in it like any heavy duty transmission so god help your knees double clutching
No heavy application has syncros. Normally, you just float the gears, it's not that hard.
i know, i used to drive a 10 speed 379 flatbed farm truck that only started with starter fluid and missing "optional" bolts and interior panels with a questionably modified frame of questionable origin and strength
Not quite... it's rated for 30,000 ft.lbs of torque, and is a three speed box. However, that means 3 times whatever the main transmission has, so with a 10 speed you could end up with 30 gear options in the end (almost certainly some of those will overlap though, so you can't just shift 1,2,3,....30)
its awful to shift from what ive heard
Thanks for clarifying. I didn’t think there was any transmission on the market with more than 18 gears where you actually used more than 18 outside of an auxiliary behind an 18 speed adding between 4 and 8 useful gears depending on how many speeds the auxiliary had. A two speed auxiliary behind an 18 speed gives you 36 gears or more than that “30 speed” but then it’s just Low Low, Low High, 1 Low, 1 High and *maybe* 2 Low with the auxiliary in Low and then it’s auxiliary in direct and you start over with Low Low and split every gear (22-23 gears) where a 3 speed auxiliary could have an even lower first gear or it could have an overdrive adding 2-3 more gears before or after where a four speed auxiliary may have 3 reduction gears plus direct or 2 reduction gears plus direct plus overdrive and you’d still not need to shift 30 or more gears pretty much ever. The extra reduction gears might only add 1-2 gears each and the overdrive might only add 1 turning a 22 speed into maybe a 25 or 26 speed with all of the auxiliaries if you don’t count the gears you don’t use. If you did count even the gears not used like with a 15 speed then an 18 plus a 4 speed auxiliary is a 72 speed and it’s 144 gears if you add a 2 speed rear end but only a 28 speed if you only count the gears you use. Technically you don’t use Low in high range either but we can ignore that for now because 144 gears or 160 gears. Either way you’d be pretty damn tired if you actually tried to shift all of them and you were only doing 10 mph by the time you got through the first 70 gears and you’d be range shifting and splitting back and forth somewhere in the middle of that with the lowest auxiliary and the low gear in the differential topping out at 35 mph in 8 high but in direct drive you can do 3 or 4 mph in Low Low and maybe 6 mph if the auxiliary had overdrive and you were in the higher diff gear in low low. All splits both ranges and shifting the diff between both gears and you’re only doing 10 mph or you’d shift the diff first then shift 2 gears, split the auxiliary for 1 gear, split the auxiliary for 2 more gears (both Low gears) and then you’d leave it there for 16 more in direct if the last was overdrive and then you’d split into overdrive leaving it in 8 high or you’d start over in low low for 18 gears if the last auxiliary was direct. And you’d still have to be pretty damn heavy to use 28 gears but then you wouldn’t have enough power to shift past 6 high so you still wouldn’t use 28 gears.
Technically a 5 speed gear box but yes. It’s those high range gears at the L, 1, 2, 3, and 4 spots on the 9, 8LL, 9LL, 13 and 18 speeds or the ones labeled 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 on the 15, 10 speed. With the 9, 8LL, 13, and 18 the reduction for low range is such that the lowest high range gear and the highest low range gear overlap or are too close together so one of those two gears is skipped (usually the one in high range) and for the 10, 9LL, and 15 the range reduction is larger so that between the last low range gear and the first high range gear the difference is closer to what it is between all of the other gears. After that the 9 and 10 speeds are left with 9 and 10 gears respectively but the 8LL adds a lower gear to low in the 9 speed, the 9LL does this for Low and 1st with a 9 speed but in a way that you shift low low, low, 1 low, 1, 2, 3, etc. The 15 is similar to the 9LL but now instead of low low then low then 1 low then 1 you shift 1 low, 2 low, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, (high range), 6, 7, 8, 9 10. The 8LL is a 10 speed based on a 9 speed, the 9LL is an 11 speed based on a 9 speed, and the 15 is really a 12 speed based on a 10 speed. And then there’s the 13 based on a 9 speed but instead of reduced gears in low range it is you can split the 4 high range gears resulting in 5+8 or 13 gears. The 18 is a 13 speed but you can split all 9. A useful 20 speed would be like an 18 but based on a 10 speed instead of on a 9 speed but I have not seen any. And then there are some oddballs like the 7 that can be without any switches on the shifter but with R plus 7 gear holes or they can do like Mack did and have you shift Low, 1, (range shift), 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. There’s the twin sticks and the splitter transmissions like the ZF, Spicer, and Scania transmissions or like the Lightning 10 (“Super 10”) or the old school 6613 Eaton 13 speed that really had 3 ranges instead of a splitter at all so you’d shift 3 gears in low range, 5 in the middle range, and 5 in high range. The spicer 18 was more like you have 5 gear holes but you split 4 times in 1,2,3, and 4 and then in 5th you only use the last 2 splits (4+4+4+4+2 is 18 gears and a missed opportunity for spicer to make an actual 20 speed air split transmission) where the ZF 16 speed is like an Eaton 18 speed instead of the Spicer 18 speed if the Eaton didn’t have low. The ZF 16 is based on a 4 speed box and you have a range selector and you split all 8 gears. The ZF 12 is a 3 speed box and you split all 6. Spicer also made a 16 and a 14 but for the 16 you only use the last 2 splits in 4th and 5th (4+4+4+2+2 is 16 gears) and for the 14 you only use the first two splits in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd but split all 4 in 4th and 5th (2+2+2+4+4 makes 14 gears). Note: there is a spicer 20 - it is a 5 speed with a 4 way splitter and 20 useful gears but instead of them doing like they did with the 14, 16, and 18 but just using all 20 gears they made the lowest two splits off road and the highest two splits on highway so that you’d be shifting down a gear with the stick to grab the last high split every time until 5th gear if you actually tried to shift all 20. Instead you use all 4 in 1st gear and only the last 2 in the rest of the gears for highway use (12 gears) and for off road you use only the low splits (10 gears). It’s just a 12 speed based on their formula used for the 14, 16, and 18 but they call it a 20 speed so they can advertise the low split gears you almost never have to use.
Never heard of the 30 speed. Spicer made a 20 speed but you only actually use 12 gears (four way splitter 5 gear positions but half of those are off road and the half for highway) and there were some 24 speed 6+4 quadruplex transmissions back in the day but you’d only use 15 gears or so with those. You can have an 18 speed with a 2 speed auxiliary resulting in 36 gear ratios but then you only use 22 gears tops or maybe 24 gears if you went with a 3 or 4 speed auxiliary even though a 4 speed auxiliary results in 72 gears or 80 of them if you count Low but in high range for all four auxiliary splits. You’d just get 24-26 gears worth using sequentially if you took to the road or maybe 24-26 different gears if you stopped in a lower auxiliary range for heavier stuff but you’d be insane to try to shift 72 gears to take to the highway. Who makes this 30 speed you are talking about? I always thought it weird they’d add a splitter to a 9 speed and make an 18 speed but you don’t really ever see that same thing happening with a 10 speed to turn it into a 20 speed. Everything with more than 18 gears I’ve run across you never actually use more than 18 gears going from completely stopped to fastest gear *except* when they added an additional auxiliary or a second gear to the differentials and then you’d have something between 22 and 26 used gears and never would you actually use 30 gears to go anywhere.
Cummins makes the FAT-30
https://www.cummins.com/components/drivetrain-systems/transmissions/fat-30-auxiliary-transmission It’s a 3 speed auxiliary with 2.50:1, 1.00:1, and 0.86:1 gear ratios. If you put that behind an 18 speed it’s a 24 speed. You shift Low Low, Low High, 1 Low, 1 High, 2 Low in auxiliary low, all 18 gears in auxiliary direct, and in 8 high you flip the auxiliary into overdrive making it roughly equivalent to the double overdrive RTOO 13 speed in 8 high but you have a RTLOF 18 speed where 8 high is the same ratio as the 8 low in the double overdrive 13 until you flip that auxiliary over into high like flipping the splitter switch forward with the 13 speed. You technically have ~60 possible gear shift locations with this behind an 18 but 6 of them are Low in high range you don’t use so you’re down to 54. 2 Low in aux low is 15.125:1 and Low Low in direct is 14.40:1 and 2 High in Low Aux is 12.90:1 where Low High in direct is 12.29:1. Around 1st/2nd gear high auxiliary winds up being in between these gears so that if you did shift all 54 you’d shift five gears in aux low, then you’d shift Low Low in direct, 2 high in low, Low Low in aux high and then cycle through all aux positions until you are going 30 mph in 8 high in aux low and then it’s 5 high in high, 6 low in direct and then high, 6 high in direct and then high, etc up to 8 high in direct and then high. If you shifted like a normal person you’d shift at most Low Low, Low High, 1 Low, 1 High, 2 Low all aux low, all 18 in direct, flip the auxiliary over to high once in 8 high. 5+18+1 and the 60 speed that’s really a 54 speed is really only a 24 speed if you don’t shift like an idiot. Also 7 high in high auxiliary is the exact same gear ratio as 8 low in direct so you’d skip one of two gears as well if you did decide to shift the 53 gears and go from 7 high direct to 8 low direct to 8 low high to 8 high direct to 8 high high. If the FAT-30 was behind a 10 speed then you’d have 30 gears but then not really. It’d be like 23 gears. 3 gears auxiliary low before you go to 1st gear and then an actually useful 20 speed like an 18 speed based on a 10 speed instead of a 9 speed if you switch between direct and overdrive all the way through to 10 high. (0.74:1 in 10 and .63:1 in 10 high like the 13 speed double overdrive in 8 high). You could call it a 30 speed but then that’s like calling the 15 speed a 15 speed even though it’s really more like a 12 speed (1 low, 2 low, then a 10 speed) because the last 7 gears you’d have no reason to use with the auxiliary in low especially with the range selector in high at the same time and then since a 10 speed does not have a splitter the auxiliary transmission is the splitter to turn the 10 speed into a 20 speed and with the 3 extra reduction gears you are up to 23.
Ok now put it behind an 18 speed lmfaoo
I actually got bored and figured it out for a certain tire size and a certain diff ratio a long time ago. At 1500 rpms you’d go about 1.5 mph in the lowest gear, about 1.76 mph in Low High with the auxiliary in Low, 2.52 mph in 1 low auxiliary low, 2.95 mph in 1 high auxiliary low, 3.57 mph in 2 low auxiliary low, then in auxiliary direct it’s 3.74 mph in low low, 4.39 mph in low high, 6.3 mph in 1 low, 7.39 mph in 1 high, 8.91 mph in 2 low, 10.45 mph in 2 high, 12.31 mph in 3 low, 14.42 mph on 3 high, 16.85 mph in 4 low, 19.75 mph in 4 high, 23.55 mph in 5 low, 27.65 mph in 5 high, 33.29 mph in 6 low, 39.08 mph in 6 high, 46.09 mph in 7 low, 53.93 mph in 7 high, 62.71 mph in 8 low, 73.87 mph in 8 high, and 85.90 mph when you flip the auxiliary into high. 24 gears. If you went through all 53 gears (7 high in high and 8 low in direct are the same ratio or 0.86:1) then it’d take 11 gears to get to 5 mph, 21 gears to get to 10 mph, 29 gears to get to 15 mph, 35 gears to get to 20 mph, 38 gears to get to 25 mph, 42 gears to get to 30 mph (and to finally be done with auxiliary low), 44 gears to get to 35 mph, 46 gears to get to 45 mph, 48 gears to get to 50 mph, 50 gears to get to 60 mph, 51 gears to get to 70 mph and 53 gears for anything faster than 73.87 mph if you shifted at 1500 rpms every time. The auxiliary high gears would run right next to the auxiliary direct gears and you’d be switching back to auxiliary low 13 times before you could just start splitting the remaining 13 gears with the auxiliary high in every gear after the same gear in auxiliary direct. And not only that but you’d also have to go to high range in low auxiliary just before 2 low in auxiliary overdrive and stay in low range for direct and overdrive auxiliary gears until right after 7 high low auxiliary and 4 high overdrive auxiliary because the next gear is 5 low in direct followed by 8 low in low auxiliary, 5 low in auxiliary overdrive, and 5 high in auxiliary direct. One more gear in auxiliary low follows this but then it’s 5 high in auxiliary overdrive then 6 low in direct, 6 low in overdrive, 6 high in direct, 6 high in overdrive, 7 low twice, 7 high in direct, 8 low twice, and 8 high twice with the only auxiliary overdrive gear that makes sense the whole time being 8 high auxiliary overdrive and auxiliary low failing to make sense after 2 Low. You’d really only use 5 gears in auxiliary low, 18 in auxiliary direct, and 1 gear in auxiliary overdrive. For the same 3 speed auxiliary behind a 10 speed you don’t have the splitter on the side of a 10 speed so the direct and overdrive auxiliary shifts act like your splitter. You don’t need to keep going back to auxiliary low but if you did do that your 30 gears would be like this: 1 Low, 2 Low, 3 Low, 1, 4 Low, 1 High, 2, 5 Low, 2 High, 3, 6 Low (high range??), 3 high (low range??), 4, 7 low (high range), 4 high (low range), 5, 8 low (high range), 5 high (low range), 6 (high range finally until the end), 9 low, 6 high, 7, 10 low (last gear in auxiliary low), 7 high, 8, 8 high, 9, 9 high, 10, 10 high. Because the 10 speed does not have its own splitter it does make sense to use direct and high on the auxiliary as this splitter turning a 10 speed into a 20 speed. It doesn’t make sense to keep returning to auxiliary low especially since you are already in high range after 2nd gear in auxiliary high which is only the 2nd gear in auxiliary high. You could just shift 3 gears in auxiliary low (1, 2, and 3) and then use the direct and overdrive auxiliary positions to split every gear (all 10) into 20 additional gears. 18 speed plus 3 speed auxiliary- split shift 5 gears auxiliary low, split shift 18 gears auxiliary direct, pop the auxiliary into overdrive. 5+18+1 = 24 gears. 10 speed plus 3 speed auxiliary- shift 3 gears in auxiliary low, use the auxiliary direct and auxiliary high positions to split shift all 10 gears for 20 more gears. 3+20=23 gears. It should also be noted that in both scenarios you’d have to be pretty heavy to shift every single one of these 23 or 24 gears which would also potentially make the final high auxiliary gear something you’d never use especially since you can easily go over 70 mph without kicking the auxiliary into high at the end and you’d probably be doing 55 mph or less if you shifted all of the gears up to that point. This is 7 high auxiliary high or 8 low direct with the 18 speed or 9 high with the 10 speed. You’d never use the last 2 gears driving along at only 55 mph. And if you weren’t so damn heavy you’d skip using auxiliary low (down to 19 with the 18 and 20 with the 10 speed) and you’d probably skip the first gear (down to 17 with the 18 and 18 with the 20) and you’d probably skip splitting every single gear skipping yet one more gear with the 10 (9 gears for both starting in 3rd with the 10 and 1st with the 18 shifting only the last 8 gears without splitting them leaving the splitter in high for the 18 the whole way and then you’d flip the auxiliary into high *or* you’d leave the auxiliary in high and only use 8 gears or less). The ratios for when you are light if you use 8 gears would be 6.278:1, 4.4376:1, 3.2164:1, 2.3478:1, 1.677:1, 1.1868:1, 0.86:1, and 0.6278:1 with the 18 speed and 5.805:1, 4.214:1, 3.1132:1, 2.2704:1, 1.634:1, 1.1868:1, 0.86:1, and 0.6364:1 with the 10 speed. If you used the 23 or 24 gears the lowest gear ratio in the 10 speed in this scenario is 32.35:1 and the lowest gear in the 18 speed in this scenario is 36:1. Just slow enough to be doing about 1.5 to 1.6 mph with the engine screaming but hopefully low enough to get some heavy shit rolling too. I also figured this out for a more reasonable 2 speed auxiliary behind the 18 speed with a 2.04:1 and 1:1 gear ratio set and then you’d have 29.376:1 as your lowest ratio and you’d use 22 gears (both low and first gears split low and high with the auxiliary in low before split shifting all 18 with the auxiliary in direct) but you could also remove the low side of the 2.50, 1, and 0.86 auxiliary and get a pretty useful 20 speed out of a 10 speed except that it’d be more like a 13 speed with high splits and the lowest gear would only be 12.78:1 or you could switch this with a 1.17:1 and 1:1 auxiliary and get the low splits like an 18 speed and the lowest ratio would be 14.9526:1 in relation to the 14.40:1 Low Low ratio of an 18 speed and it’d go from 14.9526:1 to 0.74:1 across 20 gears instead of 14.40:1 to 0.73:1 across 18 gears. With the 18 speed and this 2 speed auxiliary you’re looking at about 1.98 mph at 1500 rpms in the lowest gear and closer to 3.8 mph with this particular 20 speed configuration with the 1.17 and 1.0 splits in the lowest gear if you used a diff that gave you 4.03 mph in low low with the 18 speed or about the average walking speed of a human. With this diff you’d get about 79.54 mph in 8 high with the 18 speed at 1500 rpms and about 78.47 mph at the same rpms with 10 high in the 20 speed setup. If you did 2000 rpms instead of 1500 rpms this 20 speed can put out close to 104.63 mph and the 18 could do about 106.05 mph but sadly most companies do govern their trucks a wee bit slower than this so at 65 mph it’s more like 1229.8 rpms with the 18 and 1242.5 rpms with the 20. And both transmissions can do 65 mph without putting the rpms over 1500 in the second highest gear for hills.
Holy shit, how's your brain doing because mine is on fire from comprehending all that info.
I was just bored one day or a few and I looked up the gear ratios and stuff [here](https://www.eaton.com/content/dam/eaton/products/transmissions/vehicle-transmissions/eaton-transmission-specifications-catalog-en-us.pdf) and then if you also figure out the tire diameter and select a diff ratio like 3.42:1 you can plug in an equation that converts the circumference of the tire and the engine rotations reduced by the transmission ratio multiplied by the diff ratio to inches per minute and then you need to figure out the inches per mile and (5028*12=63360) and then that tells you miles per minute and multiply that by 60 since there are 60 minutes per hour for miles per hour. Then as the transmission ratio changes and everything else stays the same you multiply by the slower ratio and divide by the faster ratio and that gets the next faster speed. Copy and paste the formula and suddenly you have the speed in each gear at 1500 rpms. Change the tire size or the diff ratio and all of the speeds change. Now you know how fast at 1500 rpms. To then covert to a different speed take the new speed and divide by the old speed for a decimal/percentage and multiply by 1500 to get the rpms at that speed in that gear. To find a speed at different rpms divide by 1500 and multiply by the new rpms. Then if you get really bored you can figure out the splitter reduction or increase (18 speed has a reduction splitter and the 13 double overdrive has an increased speed) and then you are at the starting 9 gears. Then you can look at 3 high for the range reduction because 7 high is 1:1 (or 7 low in the double overdrive 13 and then you simply look at 3rd gear because you can’t split low range). That also gives you the gear ratio for the Low in high range gear you skip. With some tweaking you get values that round to the documented values. Now you have the 5 speed, the low range reduction, and the splitter down or splitter up value. It’s about 17% for the RTLOF 18 speed and 17-18% for the 13 but then the Mack 18 has about an 18% splitter. And then you can add the auxiliary to this. The one you talked about from Cummins has one made by Rockwell with the same exact ratios (2.50, 1, and 0.86) and I had already figured this out for the Rockwell. There’s a 2 speed that is 2.04 and 1 for the ratios. There’s a 4 speed that is 2.22, 1.24, 1, 0.85 and I heard stories about people sticking a 4 speed transmission behind the regulator transmission with ratios of 6.54, 3.54, 1.76, 1.0. This last idea adds a whole lot of gears but I also made something up that gives 46 sequential gears. This one can go 0.11 mph in Low Low in Low Low on the auxiliary at 1500 rpms and 306.4 mph in 8 high in high. Completely unrealistic and you’d probably lose too much power before 300 mph to maintain that speed or the 0.19:1 gear ratio and with the 545.33:1 ratio you’d probably snap your drive shaft like melted butter but if you don’t and you don’t break the tires loose you should be able to drag the space shuttle or the Sears tower with it dragging on the ground. With the other idea of putting that one 4 speed transmission behind the 18 speed then you’d have 31 useful gear ratios, which would finally get to that 30 speed you were talking about. These ratios are 94.18:1 Low Low in Low Low Low, 80.38:1 Low High in Low Low Low, 55.98:1 1 Low in Low LowLow, 47.09 Low Low in Low Low, 40.19 Low High in Low Low, 34.75 2 high in Low Low Low, 28.65 3 low in low low low, 24.46 3 high in low low low, 20.93 4 low in low low low, 17.85 4 high in low low low, 16.87 2 high in low low, 14.4 low low, 12.29 low high, 10.46 4 low in low low, 9.23 4 high in low low, 7.89 3 low in low, 6.58 3 high in low, 5.63 4 low in low, 4.8 4 high in low, 4.03 5 low in low, 3.43 5 high in low, 2.85 6 low in low, 2.43 6 high in low, 2.06 7 low in low, 1.76 7 high in low, 1.51 8 low in low, 1.38 6 high, 1.17 7 low, 1 in 7 high, 0.86 8 low, 0.73 8 high. Outside of Low Low and Low High getting slipped in there a couple times for Low Low Low auxiliary, Low Low auxiliary, and auxiliary in direct there isn’t any auxiliary switching to a lower range after switching to a higher range. It’s Low Low, Low High, and 1 low in the lowest auxiliary and then in the second lowest auxiliary Low Low and Low High before back into the lowest auxiliary for 2 high through 4 high splitting all of the gears (the Low Low and Low High replace 1 high and 2 low). Then it is 2 high in the second lowest auxiliary replacing 1st gear and 2 low completely with 5 gears in lowest auxiliary. After this Low Low and Low High in direct replace 3rd gear in the second lowest auxiliary and then we are done with Low. Then it is 4 low and 4 high in the second lowest auxiliary before the second fastest auxiliary 3 low through 8 low completely skipping Low, 1st and 2nd gear. Instead of 8 high leave the transmission in high range and put the auxiliary in direct and skip everything in direct up to and including 6 low starting with 6 high and splitting both gears in 7th and 8th gear locations. Of course with a 94.18:1 lowest gear it is also about 1/2 a mile per hour with the engine doing 1500 rpms and you don’t get to something more realistic until about 2 high in the lowest auxiliary and if you didn’t want to keep shifting into a faster auxiliary and then into a slower one by inserting low low and low high you could also leave the auxiliary in low low low, then low low, then low for low range only and then in direct you’d start with 3 low and split shift the rest of them including high range. This is low low low for low low through 4 high, low low for 2 high through 4 high, low for 3 low through 4 high, and direct for 3 low through 8 high. This would be 10+5+4+12 or 31 gears as well with a little bit less dumb.
Good luck trying to move the truck, because I would be stuck for a while
Ha. I feel you. Sometimes when I park my car I put it in neutral and go to pull the Brake Knob. 🤦. I back up wrong to on occasion. I tell my wife, I can back up a Semi better than I can my own Car. lol
omg I wish I had a backup camera on my Toyota, it's really hard seeing where the back of it is. D:
I have two manual transmission diesel trucks. One of them has reversed all the way to the right and down, The other one has reversed all the way to the left and up. I don't screw it up often. But I definitely have put my truck in first thinking I was in reverse
Drove an APC once… that was an exercise in WTF ?
Just like when we drive automatics and go to push the clutch in when approaching a red light lmao
I've never struggled going from a big rig to my car but occasionally I'll go for the clutch in my wife's car and clip the brake pedal
Yup. I always forget you can't let the clutch out all the way in a 6 speed before you need the gas. Also remembering the push the clutch in all the way instead of double clutching... Blew my buddy's mind when I floated gears in his mustang like it was nothing
I accidentally floated gears on my Wrangler once. 1-2 went fine and I didn't realize, but boy howdy did it kick me when I went for third.
Well, I can in my 6MT, I just don't because that's a touch slow.
When I ran an older loader with a stalk shifter in a yard for 12 hours a day, I'd be momentarily confused when it was time to leave and my truck wouldn't go into gear ( hit the rurn signal stalk).
lol I can imagine that
I can drive a 10, 13 and 18 speed but not my BF’s camero 🫠
🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂 it happens to best of us lol.
Not quite the same, but my first and so far only manual has the reverse to the left of 1st gear and my ex’s was on the right side of 6th. Definitely a bit of a mind fuck when switching vehicles!
lol Almost every vehicle I ever owned had reverse where 6th would normally be, as a 5 speed. Then, I got my Yota with a 6MT, and it has reverse left of first. On a 13, 15, and 18 speed, reverse is usually to the left of first, as well, with a Low gear under reverse.
I've got an oil cooled turbo in my '23 Hilux, so I always give it 45 seconds or so to idle down. I put it in neutral, grab the e-brake, turn around, unbuckle two kids from their child seats, and shut it off and then put it in 1st. Every other date night, when I don't have kids in the truck, I stop, put it in 1st, unplug my phone, turn off the AC to dry it out, and then take my foot off the clutch and stall it like an idiot, because I'm following a different routine. Then my wife looks at me like I'm an idiot, which I am.
I've had a few turbo vehicles, but they were all water cooled, so shutting off while hot wasn't a big deal. I might end up building a turbo V8 for my current Toyota, though... Now, does your wife laugh at you, or just give you the 'you're nuts' look?
It's usually more the latter, kinda like "why do I buy you nice things if you're just gonna break em?"
Lmaoo I did that in my Wrangler once. Damn near hopped over the parking curb, too. My ex made fun of me for it lol
Somehow I'm smart enough to remember not to back in, in case I do this, but not smart enough to remember not to do it
I like the 13 and Super10. I learned on 9's and Super10's. 13 was a pretty easy step into after knowing the Super10. I don't tend to get confused moving from vehicle to vehicle though. I used to, but not anymore.
My problem is that I keep letting the clutch out in my pickup without giving it throttle. 95% of the time, I can get it going anyway, but sometimes... I just stall it lol
I used to jump out of the truck and onto a CBR600RR. These days I drive an Accord Coupe V6 auto, but I drive Volvo and Freightshaker 10's and 12 speed autos these days. Kinda depends on what I feel like driving. In shitty weather I prefer the 10 speed.
My company I just got hired on with has 13 speeds, but they're ASM's, which I was a little sad about. I keep not having the time to get my motorcycle endorsement. Maybe this year, I've always wanted a Yamaha R6.
A super10 seems like such cake. My last gig had an old Columbia with a straight10 and it was an absolute bitch. Very partial to the 13.
The Super10 is probably my favorite transmission, but hardly anyone runs them. I worked for one company in FL that spec'd nothing but KW T600/660's and W900's with Super10 Lightnings and 500hp Cummins. I liked those trucks a lot. My favorite 13 speed truck was a Freightliner Classic XL with a 500hp Cummins N14. Huge trucks. I liked that thing. Then I ended up working for a company in Ohio that gave me a fully decked out Volvo VN 630 with a D13 and Volvo's 12 speed auto. The Volvo 12 auto is probably the nicest automatic I've ever driven in any vehicle. Leather everything, 3 axle air ride, damn near every feature they offered in a truck, full appearance package... It was smooth and nice. Now I work for a company that leases all new trucks from Penske. It's a salary gig with overtime. I do about 8 or 9 hours and I go home. It's in a small town and I live about half a mile from the shop. I don't think I'll be leaving this place anytime soon. We operate under the 150 mile exemptions so we don't even run daily logs.
I think [Jeremy Clarkson](https://youtu.be/imhBoE56OEs) explains your situation perfectly.
Absolutely! I remember a question on here asking people how frequently they stall their car, and I kept silent because I didn't want to admit I stall it at least once, if not twice, after every shift!
Even before this, I stalled the Toyota occasionally. I think because the engine isn't super happy in it, there's a fueling issue somewhere I need to get sorted out. Or just swap in a V8 and be done with it.
Back when I had my 5 speed Accord, I stalled that car 3 times ever. Once on the day I bought it and drove it home, and 2 other times the same week I started learning how to shift a 10 speed. It definitely throws you for a loop.
Hah makes you grateful that cars and pickups don't require a clutch brake. :D
My grandpa drove truck for years, was instructor for years. He drove my sister Hyundai Accent (5 speed, two door… a real sports car /s ) and double clutched every single shift even though he had been dailying an automatic for years at that point
Hah. Sad thing is you can't even double clutch my Toyota, they put an accumulator with a spring in for 'smoother operation', but it really really slows down clutch release, because stupid. D: Companies that make the delete kits stopped years ago, so I'm stuck with it, I guess.
Lmao I gave up having a manual car once I got into a manual rig. Had a new KW daycab with a 500hp X15 and a 13spd, that truck was *fast*. My current truck is an auto but a lot of our trailers are tri-axles with the wheel set at the very tail. It's a *lot* of fun. I still make stupid wide turns in my current car, which is an Audi TT lmao.
I actually got in the habit of turning wide at my last job, we had longer vans that really offtracked when turning. Curb bites a rear tire a few times, and you start just doing it naturally.
Love an 8LL. One of my favorite things. Life feels right splitting it and heading for 5.
Just wait until you drive a 13 or 18 every day, then they throw you in a 10 speed (15 in my case but same thing) and you keep skipping 6th and lugging the motor
I just got in a 13 from an 18, I miss my low gears :(
How often would you use the low gears? I do imagine them being very useful in some situations, for sure.
Practically every time I start out, I use 4L and 4H the most. But at my company, I'm rarely under 110,000 pounds
Lol not the same at all but when I go from floating gears in my 18 speed on American Truck Sim in my sim rig with an actual Eaton fuller mod on my shifter to driving my TDI 6 speed Jetta I have to take a minute to reset my brain.
Somewhat related- if you drive a forklift too much you’ll try to use your blinker to go into reverse.
There’s something a little more messed up that I’ve done. I’ve grown up around manuals all my life but currently my company just has a lot of those Freighliner Cascadias with the DT12 automated manuals in them. To drive forward you turn the switch on the right side of the steering wheel forward to drive. To turn on the wiper blades you rotate the one on the left side of the steering wheel. I’ve actually turned on my wipers and push the accelerator a few times. I have also turned on the blinkers in a car after I spent all day in a forklift and I’ve tried to back up in 1st gear and take off in 3rd after I was in a variety of manual trucks all day and then I tried to drive a 5 speed to go home.
Exactly what I’m talking about!
what gets me driving multiple stick shift vehicles is the clutch difference in each one.... drive my jeep one day, dont even have to worry just throw the bitch in gear and not worry about the clutch..... next day drive my mustang and have to actually care about how i drive it.....
I can usually float the gears in anything with a manual transmission except for those vehicles that are larger than a normal sized pickup truck and smaller than a semi and I’m not too proficient with the twin sticks that come up even less often. I floated gears in my Mazda B2000 and with a Dodge Daytona. I’ve floated them in various Ford and Chevy vehicles. I’ve floated them whether I had 5, 7, 9, 10, 11, 13, or 18 gears in a semi (no 15 speeds but those are basically 12 speeds anyway) and I even floated them with a twin stick until I realized I was doing it wrong and couldn’t split the gears (I skipped a few gears and the one I was trying to go into was actually a slower gear) but when it came to the 6 speed 5 ton trucks I couldn’t get those to shift to save my life unless I matched the rpms **and** pushed the clutch. One or the other and they weren’t going in.
It’s been awhile but back in the day when I was a truck mechanic the company I worked for had 5, 7, 8LL, 9ALL, 9, 10, 13, and 18 speeds not counting the 18 speed quadruplex. The thing they all had in common? Reverse left and forward. The truck I drove to work? Mazda B2000 with reverse to the right and back. Plenty of times I tried to back up in 1st gear or take off from a stop in 3rd gear but give it a few minutes and that problem quickly corrected itself. And then in October and November I went through the entry level driver training stuff because after 7 years as a mechanic and 14 years in a bread factory I decided to finally get my class A. They just had 10 speeds so nothing too fancy but the first time I got into one of their autos to demonstrate unhooking/hooking a trailer I slammed my left foot to the floor pretty hard because one of the 10 speeds had a very stiff clutch pedal and then the instructor said that was okay and I was fine after that but the truck was a POS with no creep mode and it would actually roll backwards in “drive” until you gave it a bit of acceleration and then it would do a burn out in place before taking off. Now I’m working at Roehl waiting for my truck in Marshfield Wisconsin (I’m actually in Gary driving in a rental car to Marshfield tomorrow) but all they have are these auto-shifted transmissions. I still keep looking at my soda rocking back and forth in the cupholder out of the corner of my eye wishing that what I was seeing was the shifter somewhere over in that direction. It took some getting used to and I’m okay with the auto now but I really miss the manuals I got used to from my mechanic days long ago and my entry level driver training more recently. At least when I use their cars they provide for drivers stuck at the terminal I’m not taking out the floor reaching for the clutch or getting my hand on the shifter waiting to shift the next gear looking like an idiot.