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Old 08-13-2017, 09:04 PM   #3
ChiefMechanicMark
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Join Date: Mar 2017
Location: Redmond
Posts: 54
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Have you driven a manual truck transmission? It's not like jumping into a pickup with a manual transmission. The transmission is square cut gears so you need to understand them to shift them. Things like double clutching or floating the gears by RPM. Also it probably has a clutch brake and if you operate it incorrectly it can destroy the brake and make it so you have to grind the gears to get into a gear when stopped.
Doing a little math here with a transmission of top gear of 1:1 depending on tire size and maximum engine speed it looks like this would be a good flat land vehicle. 3:07 gears are pretty tall and 250HP I think you are going to be slow on steep hills with your weights. It'll do better than a pickup but not much in my opinion other than the rear end is heavier duty as well as the beefiness of the vehicle overall.
If you can find something with some overdrives in the transmission and lower rear end I think you'll be happier. 300HP with an Allison 3000 series or a manual with the starting model "RTO-" the "O" stands for Overdrive. Something in a 0.75 or better will get speed on flats (AS well as better mileage.) and the rear-ends being a 3:70 or lower with those overdrives should do better for you. Feel free to send specifications and I can see if I can get you some grade-ability as well as top speeds of what you're looking at.
Items needed to do math are Engine top speed (Maximum RPM) top gear of transmission (Model of transmission if manual or Allison model and serial #) Rear axle ratio and tire size to figure out Revolutions per mile.
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