Over the years we have showed you a multitude of videos featuring truckers running twin-stick big rigs down the road. Some of them have been funny, some of them painful, but none of them have been really super informative as far as how the boxes were operating and why. Well, that all changes today with this video that we found. You are going to get a great education as to why old trucks often had twin sticks, the different setups available, and most importantly, how you operate them in the real world. This is not a guy putting on a circus show of reaching through the wheel and stuff. This is a pro in a cool rig giving us the rundown. Oh, and about that rig.
The truck that we get this lesson in is a bad ass. How about a 1978 Peterbilt 379 with a 475hp Silver 8V92 Detroit diesel, two Spicer Transmissions in a 6 +4 configuration and both packing overdrive, 5.33 gears in the rear axles, and over one million miles on the odometer. She’s a big, well broken in draft horse that serves as the best testbed we could imagine for this video.
The first couple minutes are the dude explaining the mechanical end of things and the driving end. One of the things that serves as a great reminder about what makes great truck drivers great is his understanding of the RPM drop between gears and splits. It is also interesting to learn about how come gear configurations are faster than others, in a counter-intuitive fashion.
This would absolutely confound Richard Rawlings who couldn’t grasp a 13 speed Binder and vowed to replace it with an automatic.
I’m 75 now, but about 55 – 56 years ago I drove a concrete mixer truck on Hilton Head Island, SC. The truck was a Rex 9 cubic yard with a little 180 Cummins and what was then called a 20 speed quadraplex transmission. It was a blast to drive. I vividly remember pouring footing concrete for the Harbor Town lighthouse. I would occasionally even pick up young people hitchhiking on the island and they were absolutely amazed at the shifting with the two sticks with hands off the steering wheel.
My dad could rpm match so good you never heard his gears grind.