Just a thought Pete , did you have much trouble with the S80s , our first three had a nasty habit of melting the air change pipes at the bottom of the gear-lever. With the Gardner manifold on the drivers side next to the pipes . Axe Edge was usually where they went when they got hot . I think eventually the fitters installed a plate to block the heat .
windrush:
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^Was it the two pedal Beaver that the driver had to ‘toggle up’ each morning before setting off and if this wasn’t done they didn’t perform correctly?
Pete.
Hi Pete, from what I was told they needed air pressure at maximum brake line pressure of 120 lbs / Sq. In. as it was in those days. A drop in air pressure when braking,for example, could cause gear change issues. They soon had a separate air reservoir for the gear change to maintain constant pressure. The splitter switch was also very sensitive and if the driver was a bit ham-fisted changing gear he could split a gear without wanting to. The concept was good, there wasn’t anything wrong that couldn’t have been cured.
Chris Webb:
Apart from a gutless 81 Scania on a 1976 plate,that was spare wagon and drag motor I’ve never driven anything with an auto box. Are you able to select manual changes from auto in these modern machines? Are they really as bad as some older drivers paint them?
I came off road in 1988 to go full time shunting,but for a few months in 1994 when made redundant I went back on tankers and had a 8 years old ERF E14 with twin-splitter and it was one of the finest wagons I ever drove.Owt with a ■■■■■■■ and Fuller would do for me,but I would have loved an AEC Mandator with Fuller box in olden days.
As a postscript,I live in Thirsk just off the A170 Sutton Bank road and stacks of wagons are up and down all day,from older stuff to 44t artics which must have auto boxes and it doesn’t seem to faze drivers,even at 1 in 4.
Chris. I drove a midlift with an automatic box pulling a tanker, it never let me down, it was on top of its job and comfortable. A Volvo FM soon followed by an FH. Previously I drove a Twin Splitter again with a tanker and it never missed a beat. I have just swapped my manual car for a 7 speed automatic car, its better on fuel than my old one, it feels quicker off the mark and certainly doesnt hesitate at roundabouts or on hill starts.
We could all drive 9 & 13 speed fullers without using the clutch, but now the clutch decides the sequence of events, it even blips the throttle for you, it selects the right gear, the right amount of power to the wheels.
Wheel Nut:
Chris Webb:
Apart from a gutless 81 Scania on a 1976 plate,that was spare wagon and drag motor I’ve never driven anything with an auto box. Are you able to select manual changes from auto in these modern machines? Are they really as bad as some older drivers paint them?
I came off road in 1988 to go full time shunting,but for a few months in 1994 when made redundant I went back on tankers and had a 8 years old ERF E14 with twin-splitter and it was one of the finest wagons I ever drove.Owt with a ■■■■■■■ and Fuller would do for me,but I would have loved an AEC Mandator with Fuller box in olden days.
As a postscript,I live in Thirsk just off the A170 Sutton Bank road and stacks of wagons are up and down all day,from older stuff to 44t artics which must have auto boxes and it doesn’t seem to faze drivers,even at 1 in 4.Chris. I drove a midlift with an automatic box pulling a tanker, it never let me down, it was on top of its job and comfortable. A Volvo FM soon followed by an FH. Previously I drove a Twin Splitter again with a tanker and it never missed a beat. I have just swapped my manual car for a 7 speed automatic car, its better on fuel than my old one, it feels quicker off the mark and certainly doesnt hesitate at roundabouts or on hill starts.
We could all drive 9 & 13 speed fullers without using the clutch, but now the clutch decides the sequence of events, it even blips the throttle for you, it selects the right gear, the right amount of power to the wheels.
Malc,I have an automatic Mini,6 speed and it’s a pearling little machine,first auto car I’ve had,goes like a rocket.
rigsby:
Just a thought Pete , did you have much trouble with the S80s , our first three had a nasty habit of melting the air change pipes at the bottom of the gear-lever. With the Gardner manifold on the drivers side next to the pipes . Axe Edge was usually where they went when they got hot . I think eventually the fitters installed a plate to block the heat .
I think we did Dave, there was originally an asbestos sleeve on the exhaust downpipe but that rotted away after a while. It was usually a hot flake of rust from the manifold landing on the pipes that melted them. On the S39’s the fibreglass panel closest to the driver used to catch light on long drags like Longcliffe, we had a few that set themselves ablaze!
Pete.
I was at the magazine in the infancy of the current range of automated manual gearboxes, I did a feature on insurance for a cost saving strategy and looked into the IAM test as way to lower costs. As a result I took the test myself (obviously I passed or I wouldn’t be writing this lol) anyway I did it in a Volvo FM with the geartonic box and it was ok, I’d had a 1735 Merc with EPS, which I liked, so it was like that but taken to another level. Having also driven constant mesh boxes from DB, Eaton Fuller and ZF the clutchless shift was not strange and the knocking back or forwards of the EPS switch rather than a full arm movement meant that a hands free shift wasn’t that alien helped in that perception, it was a little slow to change, but all in all I found it ok.
After TRUCK I went back to being an O/D and I bought some Stralis with AS-Tronic and I had no issues with them at all, maybe it’s my driving style, as I downshift and use the engine brake when slowing down so I’m in the correct gear as I approach an obstacle and therefore the computer doesn’t need to find a gear and get confused if the roundabout is clear or the light goes green, I’d oftem flick to manual mode too if it didn’t change down when I thought it would.
I think that a lot of the problems people have with AMT is approaching obstructions on the brakes then stamping on the throttle and expecting a computer to see what they can see and then complaining that the gearbox is crap. That is of course unless you have I-Shift, with one of those there is no need to use the manual function, they are without doubt the best gearbox ever fitted to a lorry. I did a comparison test for Mercedes when they launched the PowerShift ATM against the ZF AS-Tronic in an MAN and a Stralis, Scania’s Opticruise and an FH with I-Shift, the Volvo box was significantly better than the others, especially the Scania which was truly awful.
As you might recall I was an earthmoving man in the 80s . Most of the motors were Cat n all of them were auto box. I don’t remember any problems with them . The last motor was a 789 dumper running around 300ton n the box never missed a beat in the 3yr I had her. Now I’m not saying she’d have dashed off at a roundabout but she had no silly habits n God only knows there was some daft haul roads n ramps you’d never run into on normal roads. So I can’t understand why they’re issues with them, surely the technology is out there.
Here she is, just for the hell of it, NEVER broke down in 3yr,n she was on 16hr shifts
So the consensus of many is that there is nothing wrong with the auto box, its a fault with the modern drivers, im not knocking that, but it seems that the training is failing, there are so many drivers from the mid 80’s who still complain about the Eaton T/S. It did everything that was asked of it for me, and we were pulling slack tankers at full weight,
I agree with Mark. If you go barreling up to a road junction with smoke coming off the tyres then expecting the gearbox to spin the driven wheels while the brakes are still applied on the trailer, you are going to have problems with a manual synchromesh box and trying to go from 8th to 2nd at 50mph
So you come to a roundabout at rush hour , there’s a queue , you get to the front wait for a gap either manual or auto edge forward which is almost impssible with a Merc then accelerate it changes up and dies , lots of horn blowing , i drove EPS in 89 and never had a problem through to aroun 93 on and off then un around 06 i encountered the AS Tronic an auto that isnt an auto , trying to reverse into a tight spot , accelerate nothing a bit harder nothing then a lurch backwards Daf even sent there driver trainer up to show us where we were going wrong but he couldnt drive them either
Ramone, re auto clutch engagement, yes earlier Dafs with arsetronic it was like an on/off switch horrible to drive, earlier MAN’s fitted with the AS box whilst not as bad i found you had to aquire a technique with the throttle difficult to explain but you could have smooth clutch operation*
Moving on to the later Traxon version, the upgrade to arsetronic, in MAN’s the clutch engagement is at Volvo/Scania levels of smoothness and that appears to be continuing as mileage increases, but Daf’s i’ve driven with Traxon whilst initially much more controllable appear to be morphing to on/off switch again as mileage increases, or at least thats what it feels like to me.
Only driven the odd Stralis with arsetronic and whilst the clutch engagement felt fine the thinking time for the box as roughly that of auto Mercs, so slow that the one time i used auto hill hold (something i always otherwise switch off) it would invariably release a second or so before the box had found what it was looking for and power was applied again.
*one thing i noted, if you find the clutch juddering on an AS box whilst engaging, mostly when reversing up a light incline where the vehicle didn’t display this juddering before, and the vehicle has covered near enough 500k, then from my observation the release bearing is on its way out and will fail in a few months time requiring recovery.
The dealer a few years ago at the time ignored my report about this juddering when in for service and sure enough couple of months later the thing broke down, the sister vehicles had all suffered the same fate at lower mileages, 450k ish, mine went at 550k ish, remember i’m on full weight work, vehicles on lighter work should in theory see higher mileages before problems.
Whether Traxon boxed vehicles will have similar release bearing failings with similar early warnings to anyone paying attention remains to be seen.
Juddian:
Ramone, re auto clutch engagement, yes earlier Dafs with arsetronic it was like an on/off switch horrible to drive, earlier MAN’s fitted with the AS box whilst not as bad i found you had to aquire a technique with the throttle difficult to explain but you could have smooth clutch operation*Moving on to the later Traxon version, the upgrade to arsetronic, in MAN’s the clutch engagement is at Volvo/Scania levels of smoothness and that appears to be continuing as mileage increases, but Daf’s i’ve driven with Traxon whilst initially much more controllable appear to be morphing to on/off switch again as mileage increases, or at least thats what it feels like to me.
Only driven the odd Stralis with arsetronic and whilst the clutch engagement felt fine the thinking time for the box as roughly that of auto Mercs, so slow that the one time i used auto hill hold (something i always otherwise switch off) it would invariably release a second or so before the box had found what it was looking for and power was applied again.
*one thing i noted, if you find the clutch juddering on an AS box whilst engaging, mostly when reversing up a light incline where the vehicle didn’t display this juddering before, and the vehicle has covered near enough 500k, then from my observation the release bearing is on its way out and will fail in a few months time requiring recovery.
The dealer a few years ago at the time ignored my report about this juddering when in for service and sure enough couple of months later the thing broke down, the sister vehicles had all suffered the same fate at lower mileages, 450k ish, mine went at 550k ish, remember i’m on full weight work, vehicles on lighter work should in theory see higher mileages before problems.Whether Traxon boxed vehicles will have similar release bearing failings with similar early warnings to anyone paying attention remains to be seen.
Well i’ve never driven the newer Dafs , the newest MAN was a 13 plate and that was same as the DAF the way it drove , i had a 16 plate Sralis and it was poor but nothing like as bad as the Mercs we run.
coomsey:
As you might recall I was an earthmoving man in the 80s . Most of the motors were Cat n all of them were auto box. I don’t remember any problems with them . The last motor was a 789 dumper running around 300ton n the box never missed a beat in the 3yr I had her. Now I’m not saying she’d have dashed off at a roundabout but she had no silly habits n God only knows there was some daft haul roads n ramps you’d never run into on normal roads. So I can’t understand why they’re issues with them, surely the technology is out there.
Here she is, just for the hell of it, NEVER broke down in 3yr,n she was on 16hr shifts
0
Hiya Coomsey,
Whole different breed of vehicles and set-up mate, most, if not all, have got a torque converter fitted so all of the above described problems wouldn’t appear on dumpers, wheel loaders etc.
That’s one of the reasons the tractor units plated for 250t had torque converters too, although Volvo has proved now that it can be done with a “normal” gearbox fitted with crawler gears.
Cheers, Patrick
You’ve mentioned Opti-Cruise NMM… still get nightmares about that…
I’ve driven both the 4-series and the R-series mk1 fitted with it, and it was by far the most horrible set-up I’ve ever experienced, gear changes were that slow that I came to a sudden halt on a regular basis, bearing in mind I had a total weight of 50 to 60t. It didn’t make any difference if you’d put it in manual, result was the same. Only good thing about it was that whilst manoeuvring you had a good sense of what you were doing due to the clutch pedal. Other than that I can’t think of one positive thing to say about it.
I thought the cab of those earlier R-series were horrendous too, I happily swapped it for a Actros (mk2), despite what anyone says about it, I loved it!
Wheel Nut:
So the consensus of many is that there is nothing wrong with the auto box, its a fault with the modern drivers, im not knocking that, but it seems that the training is failing, there are so many drivers from the mid 80’s who still complain about the Eaton T/S. It did everything that was asked of it for me, and we were pulling slack tankers at full weight,I agree with Mark. If you go barreling up to a road junction with smoke coming off the tyres then expecting the gearbox to spin the driven wheels while the brakes are still applied on the trailer, you are going to have problems with a manual synchromesh box and trying to go from 8th to 2nd at 50mph
If you go barreling up to a road junction in one of our motors at 50 mph with smoke coming off the tyres the last thing you would be worrying about would be the autobox , more likely the box you would be going in on your final jorney.
Yes that Opticruise was horrible, the first two pedal, three if you count the emergency clutch folded up in the footwear, Telligent boxes were worse though. I only used one once and that was bobtail too, it was for the 25th anniversary of Truck of the Year and I took an 1857 Actros from wherever the staging area was into Birmingham city center where the convention center that had all of the past winners lined up was located, it involved a run up the M6 and into the city center. I was really looking forward to driving it, I mean it was a 570hp lorry and that was huge at the time and it was a major disappointment due to that gearbox, it really ruined the lorry.
I had a similar experience driving an Opticruise equipped 164-580 belonging to the Jordan F1 racing team whilst on a play date at Scania HQ. Around the many roundabouts in Milton Keynes that thing could make you look like a complete amateur rather than the professional road tester you were masquerading as. It’s quite unreal to think that a prestigious manufacturer like Scania have only recently made a half decent AMT when their CAG system was one of the first on the roads in the mid 90s.
Still waiting for you to come here for your training on the Foden 12speed Patrick . Me or Pete could soon get you up to speed and make a proper driver of you , and as a bonus there is also ROF’s sheeting and roping course , although he is a bit pricey .
pv83:
You’ve mentioned Opti-Cruise NMM… still get nightmares about that…I’ve driven both the 4-series and the R-series mk1 fitted with it, and it was by far the most horrible set-up I’ve ever experienced, gear changes were that slow that I came to a sudden halt on a regular basis, bearing in mind I had a total weight of 50 to 60t. It didn’t make any difference if you’d put it in manual, result was the same. Only good thing about it was that whilst manoeuvring you had a good sense of what you were doing due to the clutch pedal. Other than that I can’t think of one positive thing to say about it.
I thought the cab of those earlier R-series were horrendous too, I happily swapped it for a Actros (mk2), despite what anyone says about it, I loved it!
Not sure what Mercs we run i think they are Axors narrow cab knees touch the dash , you have to lean down to see out of the side windows and if you sit up straight you are looking at the tacho … progress , oh and they are always breaking down
Opticruise was hopeless in auto, long winded wouldn’t start to describe it, but, switch it into MH, note Not M, because changes in MH were nearly twice as fast as in M, and it was a peach of a box.
I had one new in 2006 in a car transporter, tried it in auto for about a fortnight till it managed to stall out on me turning onto a main road from an uphill side road, yes i spat me dummy out with it and anyone within earshot learned a whole new vocabulary.
From that moment on i drove it in manual, discovering along the way that MH allowed far quicker shifts, discovered also that it was unfailingly responsive to what you the driver wanted, turned out to be my favourite AMT box of all due to still having that clutch pedal so the driver was still in charge of maneuvers and starting off from stationary.
Just shows how much we all like different things.
Don’t get me started on Mercs, whilst i have the greatest respect for older versions apart from that awful EPS box, i liked the despised by many square Axor (when it was fitted with the slapover manual it proved a good workhorse the engien of which remined me of good ■■■■■■■ lumps), having driven the newer model i have yet to find a single good thing to say about them apart from the V6 has a nice engine note so you can sort of convince yourself its a V8, but with a blocked fuel filter.
Juddian:
Opticruise was hopeless in auto, long winded wouldn’t start to describe it, but, switch it into MH, note Not M, because changes in MH were nearly twice as fast as in M, and it was a peach of a box.I had one new in 2006 in a car transporter, tried it in auto for about a fortnight till it managed to stall out on me turning onto a main road from an uphill side road, yes i spat me dummy out with it and anyone within earshot learned a whole new vocabulary.
From that moment on i drove it in manual, discovering along the way that MH allowed far quicker shifts, discovered also that it was unfailingly responsive to what you the driver wanted, turned out to be my favourite AMT box of all due to still having that clutch pedal so the driver was still in charge of maneuvers and starting off from stationary.Just shows how much we all like different things.
Don’t get me started on Mercs, whilst i have the greatest respect for older versions apart from that awful EPS box, i liked the despised by many square Axor (when it was fitted with the slapover manual it proved a good workhorse the engien of which remined me of good ■■■■■■■ lumps), having driven the newer model i have yet to find a single good thing to say about them apart from the V6 has a nice engine note so you can sort of convince yourself its a V8, but with a blocked fuel filter.
We had a few brand new Opticruise with clutch pedals and i preffered them to the Dafs , like you say each to their own , we had one driver who complained they were changing from top into 11th all the time so we switched the kick down off , it solved the problem of a hard footed driver who wasn’t using cruise. They were brilliant on fuel running around 1150rpm in top gear with 23 ton gross
rigsby:
Still waiting for you to come here for your training on the Foden 12speed Patrick . Me or Pete could soon get you up to speed and make a proper driver of you , and as a bonus there is also ROF’s sheeting and roping course , although he is a bit pricey .
I would love to have a go at that Dave! But to address more pressing matters first… if I’m not mistaken all the above mentioned training courses include a breakfast? I’m now at The Stockyard near Rotherham having scrambled eggs on toast, which gent is it that pays for it again? 