Quote:
Originally Posted by SlacTrac
That's the one I learned on, about 1971 I was working for a South Texas Land Clearing and Earth Moving Company running Cat D-8 36a Dozers doing root plowing and tank building. I moved the tractors and equipment with a Mack B-77. I don't remember what year it was, but it wasn't new by any stretch. Air Conditioning provided by the holes in the floor boards. It had what was called a 5 speed with a 4 speed BrownLight. When fully loaded, Tractor, Dozer Blade and Root Plow was 127,000 lbs. Main Shift into 1st then run the 4 speeds of the brownlight. Then nuteral on the brown (very imprtant to shift the brown to nutral then shift the main, then back to 1st on the brown, or the gears won't mesh) and second on the main, then run the 4 speeds with the brown light. By the time your up to top speed its time to down shift by doing the routine in reverse. Sounds pretty complex, but in practice was a piece of cake. No clutch, except to start off in low 1st. My partner was real bad about twisting the drive shaft on it trying to start off. Fun times. Wish I was there again.......... The Good Ole Days??? :lol:
Actually, you use 3 of the gears in the auxiliary (2 thru 4 on a brownie or lo split, direct & hi split on a Mack Quadruplex) to split each gear on the main (5 speed) stick. The 1st gear on the aux stick (also known as lo-lo on the Mack Quadruplex) is a deep reduction gear for off road use and is not part of the on road shifting sequence.
Unless your split shifting with 2 hands, you don't want the brownie (aux) in neutral when you're shifting the main stick, because then you have nothing to sychronize your engine RPM's to.
For the first 10 years or so of my career I ran Mack Dump trucks & tractor trailers with the Quadruplex 5X4 transmission in the hills of CT and NY state.
I've always thought that Mack should have designed a triple countershaft edition of the Quadruplex transmission which would stand up to the torque and HP of todays engines, then we would still be able to enjoy shifting with 2 hands.