Introduction And Question.

Hello all,

I've been lurking the forums here for awhile and have to say this site is a wealth of information. I started training at a private school on the 15th and tested the 18th on General Knowledge, Air Brakes, and Combination at the DMV for our permit. The online training program here helped me more than studying the state manual with it's progressive questioning and still working through it for the other sections I have yet to test on. Thank you for the hard work you dedicated to this site.

Today was our first day out in the truck and an introduction to reality! It's not that easy to drive one of these things, so much going on at once but not as bad as I thought it would be. We had several runs through the gears and and back down. The Volvo shifts at 1000 in the low range and 1400 at the high and about the reverse coming down. I read a trick on here some time ago about adding the odd numbers together (i.e. 35 mph / 3+5= 8th gear) should you forget which gear you should be in and it really helped, but the transmission felt like it had a tremendous amount of slop in it. Is this indicative of a school truck or is this a norm that needs to be learned and overcome? Even while in gear it felt like "neutral".

v/r Jason

Well first of all, knowing what gear is a certain mph isn't always going to be the same. You have so many different transmissions. I drive a 9 speed and 2nd gear is 10mph, 3rd gear is 15mph, 4 year is 20mph, 5th gear is 25mph, 6th gear is 35mph, 7th gear is 55mph and 8th is my high gear so 55+. So that rule doesn't apply to my truck but if it applies to yours then use it as an advantage but I wouldn't obsess about memorizing the mph matching with the gear. You'll be driving a lot of different trucks from now to the time you'll get your own truck. Like my instructors told me a while ago, shift when your rpms are in the green area. Which for us was 13-15.

I had trouble remembering what gear I was in also. But the entire drive just keep repeating the gear you're in to yourself, in your head. So as I was driving I was saying "5th gear " in my head so I wouldn't forget. It helped me a lot hopefully it'll help you.

And about the engine feeling like its in neutral when driving. I'm not too sure. It could be just how it drives, could be that you're not used to it yet, or it could be needing some repairs. It's not the normal. When you're in gear you should hear and feel the engine working. Just an obstacle of many, many, many, many that you'll have to overcome.

Good luck to you sir and I hope I helped.

Daniel is right on about shifting - it will be different in every truck.

But the sloppy shifter - that's simply a worn out transmission. When that truck is in gear, that shifter should be solid. It shouldn't have a total slop of more than an inch, and normally it would be far less than that. I've driven really worn out trucks and I know exactly what you mean. One time I drove this super old cabover for a day years ago and the transmission was so worn out you actually hit the dash with the shifter in certain gears. The dash had a small hole worn into it from that!

There isn't anything you can do about it obviously. It's going to make shifting a newer truck a bit more tricky because you're not used to the transmission being so "tight". But you'll adapt quickly enough. No biggie.