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15 Speed Twin Stick


Dennis M

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Video of a B61 Mack with a twin stick 15 speed - not for the faint of heart!!

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DW0S99TyTj8

Dennis & Nancy
Tucson, AZ in winter, on the road in summer.

1999 Volvo 610 "Bud" 425 HP Volvo, Super 10 spd.
2005 Mountain Aire 35 BLKS
2013 smart fortwo CityFlame riding on Bud
(Replaced '05 smart first loaded in '06

and '11 smart that gave it's life to save me!)
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I use to own a drilling rig with a 4x5 setup. Your right arm got tired real easy or your right arm was real strong if you drove it very much. Now just a ten speed with an Eye shift. I mean I shift without the cluck unless at a full stop.

Better quit or I will get in trouble again.

 

 

Keep it straight , Vern

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Yeah, the Spicer 4x4 was fun. But it has ONE mainshaft. Split boxes can wind up with BOTH in neutral at the same time with the rig rolling if you miss. You either stop to get one in gear and start again, or think REAL fast and you can do it on the fly.

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Ya Sibernut, been there MANY times in the past! Especially fun when you have to stop, get out, grab your crow bar and pry the linkage loose on the A-box

Even more embarrassing when you miss a shift on your air shifter on 4 speed A-box behind a Alison! (Don't ask me how I know that)

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Yeah, the Spicer 4x4 was fun. But it has ONE mainshaft. Split boxes can wind up with BOTH in neutral at the same time with the rig rolling if you miss. You either stop to get one in gear and start again, or think REAL fast and you can do it on the fly.

 

Back in the stone age........the family had a herd of KW & Autocar log trucks and a couple of low-boy trucks ALL were 5 & 4 gear box trucks most with Cummins and a few with screaming Jimmies.........

 

One week a retired professor ask "Grumps" to ride in a log truck for a few trips into the woods so that he could have first hand knowledge for a magazine story he was writing about logging....... at 04:30 the sleepy-eyed prof piled into the ole KW and off they went up, up, up, up, down, down, up, up, down, up a bunch of twisty, pot-holed highways and then they turned off the "good-roads" onto the steep, even-more-twisty-darn-steep-washboard-often-muddy-logging-pig-trail-"roads"............

 

Grumps did the usual chores such as driving, rolling cigs, shifting two trannys, pouring coffee, shifting two trannys, dodging rocks, shifting two trannys, dodging pot-holes, shifting two trannys, dodging deer & elk, shifting two trannys, and keeping a eye in the log binders,shifting two trannys ,looking at the gages, shifting two trannys, AND making sure that he did not "bump-into-another-log-truck........or pickup on the blind one-lane corners...........

 

That evening after the "prof" had a shower and a little nap he come over to the house to have dinner and ask more questions about what he had seen on his 'adventure" of hauling logs that day........ the prof ask a lot of questions but then he paused and said........." you know I am a highly educated man and in fact I have a Phd.........complex subjects are my life tasks.........but I am baffled how-on-earth do you shift thru 20 gears at least 200 times a day and not miss a gear".............

 

Grumps did not even stop eating when he said oh heck.........not all the time do I shift through all 20 gears........sometimes when the load and road allow I will skip a few gears"........the "skip-a-few-gears" remark really blew the profs "complex-task-mind".............so........the prof next ask "how often do you miss a shift?"...............Grumps stopped eating and looked pretty hard at the prof and said .........."I don,t clean loaded guns and I don't miss shifts driving log trucks........both of those things are pretty sure methods to kill yourself"............

 

Grumps used to say shifting a 5 & 4 gear train is easer than walking........."sometimes you might stub your toe walking...... but even the dumbest logger can get through 20 gears............

 

There was no auto shift back then so multi-gear-box was just the way life was.........

 

Imagine............our grand-kids will likely tell their grand kids............your great-grand-dad had a big ole truck that he actually had to steer with his hands and eyes and even had to brake with his foot...........Imagine no auto-steer or no auto-brake........how crude.........

 

Drive on............(Shift as needed.......)

97 Freightshaker Century Cummins M11-370 / 1350 /10 spd / 3:08 /tandem/ 20ft Garage/ 30 ft Curtis Dune toybox with a removable horse-haul-module to transport Dolly-The-Painthorse to horse camps and trail heads all over the Western U S

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DollyTrolley, I get a real kick out of your "GRUMPS" stories.......think I would have enjoyed meeting him....and you, too. Some people are just larger than life, it seems.

 

Drive on.........[ Tellin' them tales....] thanks for the levity. Charlie

Don't ever tell a soldier that he doesn't understand the cost of war.

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DollyTrolley, I get a real kick out of your "GRUMPS" stories.......think I would have enjoyed meeting him....and you, too. Some people are just larger than life, it seems.

 

Drive on.........[ Tellin' them tales....] thanks for the levity. Charlie

 

Charlie.......at the time (50's & 60's) most folks had thought that life had gotten a bit smaller after the big events of WWII.........by todays "standards' I suppose being a gyppo-logger might seem to be a larger-than-life endeavor........

 

A friend of mine that I went to school with 'escaped" the logging-life and did well in electronics shakes his head and says..........."Oh our folks were not so much "larger-than-life" .......no, "life-tended-to-be-bigger" back then.........

 

Yes indeed there are a lot of "Grumps-stories" and some are pretty funny and a few pretty sad but the gyppo - logger is extinct animal and in some ways that might not be too bad........ it was a tough-life at best and down right deadly often........

 

It's pretty funny that in the mid-70's a school teacher moved in next door to Grumps and fist thing the teacher told Grumps was that he had to see the new movie staring Paul Newman & Henry Fonda based on the book "Sometimes a Great Notion"...........The movie was about breaking a logging strike by a family of gyppo-loggers on the Oregon Coast and in the movie almost everyone but the hero Paul Newman is killed in some sort of logging "event"...............Grumps had not been to a movie since WWII but the teacher pestered him until he went to the movie...........the next evening the teacher came over to the house and ask grumps if the gory accidents scared him...........Grumps smiled and said ....."oh, heck just like Hollywood to sugar-coat-a-story.........they did not even get the trucks stuck or muddy......."

 

Grumps was ......Grumps.........in late life he said.........." I made it big time, lost it big-time, and had a hell-of-a-time, what else could you want out of life..........."

 

In the mean time when ever I drive the old Freightliner I try to recall the lessons about trucks that Grumps tried to hammer into my thick skull.......so far so good.......

 

Drive on........(Enjoy the ride.........)

97 Freightshaker Century Cummins M11-370 / 1350 /10 spd / 3:08 /tandem/ 20ft Garage/ 30 ft Curtis Dune toybox with a removable horse-haul-module to transport Dolly-The-Painthorse to horse camps and trail heads all over the Western U S

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Once upon a time I drove a R600 Mack c/w a 237hp engine and 6 spd trans 5 axle semi trailer hauling fuel over the steppes of eastern AB. And then one Saturday I took a spare trip when my bow wow was in the shop and drove a Freightliner COE, Cummins Super 250 with Spicer 4 and 4. Just for fun I counted (accurate plus or minus 2% 19 times out of 20) how many shifts in a 380mile round trip on 2 lane highway, one way empty, through a number of small towns, one small city with 7 or 8 stop lights, over gently rolling prairie land. IShifted about one thousand two hundred and eighty seven times.

 

Now these were engines that were of the "shut your lights off to reduce the power the alternator takes when you see a hill coming" variety so you sometimes had time to sip a coffee between shifts...

 

The Mack was better cause if you were coming NW out of Regina against the wind, once you got into road gear about 30 miles out of town you set your cruise (pulled the hand throttle out all the way and locked it) and opened the lid on the lunch cooler and rummaged out a nice roast beast sammich ....

 

Drive on... (no longer lookin at the Bulldog's... view ...)

"Are we there yet?" asked no motorcycle rider, ever. 

 

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I've seen a piece of broom handle used as cruise control. One end attached to the dash by a hinge, and the other had a screen door spring to hold it at the ready. To engage "cruise", you reach under the dash and swing the stick down to where it jams the pedal to the metal.

 

the "Good Old Days" is now.

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How many of you guys would "kick it" out of gear to gain speed for the next hill. I started in 1959. Not one 4 lane road, just finished the PA Turnpike I think.

 

No A/C

No Power steering

No insulation in cab

No power windows

No air ride seats (just a seat cushion to sit on).

No air ride suspension

No cell phones

No CB radios

No radial tires

No automatics

Ran without a muffler

Geared for 52 MPH

We drove till we dropped, sometimes 3 days without sleep.

No sleeper, you carried a board to put between the seats

Little pills.... NO, not asprin.

 

And, we lived thru it and never complained....... too much!

 

Bigtrailer

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That perfectly described Halliburton in 1976 when I started in Fairview, Alberta, except it was an International Cabover with no sleeper and two guys in the cab.

 

Drove until you saw three roads with trees on two of them, then grabbed a couple of hours sleep and did it all over again. All winter long.

 

Geo

George,
Suzuki Celerio 998cc

Yamaha NMAX scooter

 

Work ride is Western Star N2 Tri-Tri tanker at 56,500kg loaded

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How many of you guys would "kick it" out of gear to gain speed for the next hill. I started in 1959. Not one 4 lane road, just finished the PA Turnpike I think.

 

No A/C

No Power steering

No insulation in cab

No power windows

No air ride seats (just a seat cushion to sit on).

No air ride suspension

No cell phones

No CB radios

No radial tires

No automatics

Ran without a muffler

Geared for 52 MPH

We drove till we dropped, sometimes 3 days without sleep.

No sleeper, you carried a board to put between the seats

Little pills.... NO, not asprin.

 

And, we lived thru it and never complained....... too much!

 

Bigtrailer

 

Right on Big......

 

About 58 0r 59 Grumps bought a "almost-new" 54 KW long-logger and it had..........TWO big ash-trays..........AND........Power Steering.......... AND .........a custom drivers seat with a Monroe Shock Absorber cobbled on it..................the first day he drove the "54" out to get the first load of logs the rest of the loggers walked around it and even jumped in and tried the "pogo-seat".........then one old logger said........"Grumps, your getting pretty-uppity and a bit soft with this "girley-truck" .............Grumps smiled and said........Oh hell I'm not going to drive this truck........I'll just have other drivers drive this truck because they will PAY me to drive a truck this NICE!!!!" (for it's "day" the "54" was a pretty "spiffy truck")....Grumps plan did not pan-out because he did have to pay the drivers for about the next 3.700,000 miles or so.............( yes we did have to replace the pogo-seat shock a few times.....)

 

Drive on..........(don't let the ash trays get too full........)

97 Freightshaker Century Cummins M11-370 / 1350 /10 spd / 3:08 /tandem/ 20ft Garage/ 30 ft Curtis Dune toybox with a removable horse-haul-module to transport Dolly-The-Painthorse to horse camps and trail heads all over the Western U S

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Thanks much for posting !! That was awesome..

My hat is off to all the truckers from back in the day like that..

Plus add no power steering :( as well as the tiny sleepers on many of them.

Real men they were FerShure !!

Cheers,

Bob

1989 Safari Serengeti 34'
Towing a 1952 M38A1 Military Willys

Past HDT owner

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