Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Who knew?

 

Our Allison transmission has 6 gears.  I always took that at face value.  Our Aladdin system has a digital display that shows what gear the transmission is in.  I can watch it shift from 1 through 6.  There is a letter that follows every gear; the letter “L”.  I took that to mean “Low”, and that maybe some heavier duty version of the transmission, for a bigger rig or maybe a semi truck-tractor, has a “High” range to go with the Low range.  But driving on a slow steep winding road to a campground, when first gear wasn’t quite getting it, I noticed that the transmission downshifted.  It downshifted from 1st gear Low, to…. …what?  I switched over to the digital display to watch while I messed with hills and gears and figured out that there are two more gears than I knew about.  There is 1st gear “C” and 2nd gear “C”.  If terminology I remember from my youth still applies, that would be a compound low for first gear and second gear.  Our six speed transmission has eight different gears.

 

Who knew?

 

 

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