How to shift an 18 speed trans. in my custom Peterbilt with straight pipes.

[Music] back [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] all right guys i'm going to do a video on how to shift an 18 speed i got a gopro over here on the window i got the gopro back here and i got a gopro on the pov hat so i'm gonna do my best to try and get this edited to where it's beneficial from all views so 18 speed transmission typically it would have a normal knob on it obviously mine's custom this is the shift pattern normally it would be somewhere up on your dash or maybe on the back side of your visor but as you can see it's just an eight speed basically it's an h pattern you got first second third fourth you got low low that's three gears unto itself so that's what makes it an 18 speed but outside of that it's a four speed and just one two three four and then you go back to five six seven eight and then this high low that's on here hl that is this button right here that's your overdrive okay so as you can see on the paper it says you're supposed to select the splits before you shift and then you got your high low range here which goes takes you from fourth to fifth so you do one two three four split it to the high side and then you got five overdrive six direct six overdrive seventh direct seventh overdrive eighth direct and eighth overdrive so that's the basics of it you can see on here you can look this up online that's where i got this from was online um i just printed it out on a normal piece of paper so i could show you because i don't have it in my truck anywhere so um then of course you got your reverse and you got you can overdrive your reverse as well as go to the high side but chances are you'll never get the truck to take off with it in the high side you have to be moving really good and then flip it to the high side to get it to go that fast i don't recommend that with a loaded trailer ever um but you can sometimes if you watch my videos you'll see me uh overdriving reverse because it will give you a little bit better speed if you have like a long distance like this to cover so anyway um that's about it on the rundown and put this away and so i excuse the mess this is all gopro mount stuff so um like i said it's a four speed so i'm gonna push the clutch clear down to the floor to engage the clutch brake we're gonna go over we're gonna go into first gear that's first gear um if you are not familiar with these transmissions move the stick around you'll feel it um this right here there's a hard spot right there see how it wiggles like that right there there's a hard spot when you go past the hard spot over and up that's reverse and then low low is right behind it for all intents and purposes you're never going to use low low that's only for like really heavy coming out of places or maybe even if you haul heavy obviously heavy heavy like over a hundred thousand pounds you might use it to take off and then you can split it as well so which is it's overdrive i keep saying split but it's overdrive you can overdrive it so you have first overdrive second overdrive third overdrive fourth overdrive and then you would pull it back pull the lever up and into fifth overdrive sixth overdrive seventh overdrive eighth overdrive now on the bottom side one two three four we're not gonna use the overdrive i mean i might but chances are i won't need it um the reason this truck has an 18-speed transmission it used to have a 13-speed transmission which a 13 is the exact same transmission you just can't overdrive the first four gears it won't even let you do this sitting still like this you well with this button down it won't let you do it you would have to pull this button up and then flip that it'll allow you to flip that button um i have a chrome cover on mine this gray button is what indicates this is a 18 speed if it was a 13 it would be red if it was a 15 which is a whole nother deal it would be blue and then there's other transmissions we're not going to get into all of that you can google all of that stuff if you want to this is about 13 or an 18 actually and this button just pushes on so 13 is going to shift the same way you're going to see me shift it it's one two three four split it into fifth overdrive sixth overdrive seventh overdrive eighth overdrive so excuse me a 13 will shift the exact same way that you're going to see me shift this so uh and 18 is just your ability to overdrive the bottom side now if you're riding across the parking lot or something like that being able to overdrive the bottom side when you're not heavy sometimes it's beneficial just so you're not at that rpm range where you're being loud while my trucks allowed or you got the rpms up or it'll bring the rpms down to where uh they're manageable but anyway all right let's get this show on the road and uh you'll get to see me run through the gears here all right before we take off here i had to go inside get some drinks but uh before we take off i forgot to mention when you're flipping the overdrive button all you have to do is lift your foot off the floor and it will shift you can hear the air actuator actuating right now same with the high low range it's just air but you do not have to lift your p how do i want to word that all you have to do is flip the button lift your foot and it'll shift and you can come back down on the throttle you don't have to move the stick at all some people do move the stick i'm not a big fan of that because i pull liquid tank and i have to shift quickly to adjust for the surge inside the tank so anyway let's get the show on the road again push the clutch the whole way down engage the clutch brake and release the brakes and away we go now i float gears well there's liquid i flow gears so i don't touch the clutch when i'm shifting most drivers who've been driving any amount of time don't clutch is for starting and stopping now we're coming out into construction here so gonna make life a little more complicated going to the high side flip the lever up and up into fifth gear now that is how you would shift to 13 speed is like i just did you wouldn't need to split the but to overdrive the bottom end split the bottom end now we're going into fifth overdrive i'm gonna put push the button pick up on the throttle come back down on the throttle now sixth direct sixth overdrive normally i'd be accelerating harder but because we're in the construction now we're going to seventh rack just flip the button back and move the stick same deal push the button lift off the floor come back down on the throttle again this is a liquid tank so you can kind of feel the the bump when the surge hits the back of the tank i like to shift at 17 about 1700 rpms when i'm loaded sometimes i'll let it go to 18 see we're starting up a little grade here so i'll let it go to a little bit higher i'll let it keep pulling we also have a big headwind all right we're starting to pick up rpm so we're gonna pull the button back left and go into eighth direct now we're going to 8th overdrive same deal move the button pick up on the throttle and it'll shift when you take the tension off the forks in the transmission the air actuator automatically shifts it now if you want to downshift just pull the button back lift and it'll shift same deal now we're gonna go back to overdrive eighth overdrive and that right there eight overdrive is what most people would call 18th gear it's easier to differentiate between the gears by just going one two three four and then over driving them so you got first overdrive first direct in overdrive second direct in overdrive third direct in overdrive fourth direct in overdrive fifth direct in overdrive and so on and so forth i'm not gonna run through a ball that's enough of them but anyway so if you wanted to downshift like i said again you're going to pull the button back give it some throttle and it will downshift that's about it um when i get slowing down somewhere maybe i'll do some video on downshifting it but that's how you shift it it's just in reverse when you're going down yeah like i said you pull the button back put it indirect then you would go push the button forward to go into seventh overdrive seventh direct sixth overdrive six direct and so on and so forth but that's basically how it goes that's how you're shifting it a 13 or an 18 speed but this is an 18 speed all right i'm going to go into this service plaza here i'm going to show you how to downshift an 18 speed and we're down far enough now we'll just go ahead and flip the button lift off the pedal a little bit and we downshifted that's going to be eighth direct now we're gonna go to seventh overdrive so we're gonna push the button forward give it some throttle and downshift and seventh direct you're gonna go straight to sixth direct because i had to slow down so much oh there's a liquid that's why you gotta watch pulling liquid tank while you're doing now i just went into fifth direct i skipped fifth overdrive and sometimes you slow down fast now that ramp is kind of short so sometimes when you slow down fast enough you uh can skip the overdrive gears but that's it that's how you downshift now we're going to go into fourth maybe there we go and then third and doing all of that without the clutch oh there's a truck in that one [Music] all right guys that is how to shift an 18 speed up and then a little bit back down uh for the most part by the time you get into the low side which is first through fourth you're going to be pretty much slowed or stopped anyway you know close to where you got to be very rarely will you have to go into the high or the low side like i just did coming into a parking lot but uh i shouldn't say very rarely but you're gonna be going real slow by the time you do it so anyway uh that's how to shift an 18 speed so if you've got any questions on anything that i may you think i may have missed or want to know anything drop a comment let me know and hit the subscribe button if you like it i got lots of other videos and keep a shiny side up rubber on the ground and safe travels we'll see you in the next one

Channel: Truckin' life

Views: 711,779

Rating: 4.8899546 out of 5

Keywords: #belair Peterbilt, Peterbilt, cummins, custom Peterbilt, 18 speed, 18 Spd, 13 speed, 13 Spd, how to, how to shift, POV, Peterbilt 379, custom interior, custom shifter, semi, custom semi, custom semi shifter, 379

Id: gbXXWrJtSbA

Length: 17min 31sec (1051 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 22 2020