The toxic tyrannical culture that killed Volkswagen

Agree with Chappy -- you can with minimal tools swap a clutch in your driveway, pretty simple given basic instructions and some special tools, perhaps. Not so much rebuild a transmission (reliably anyway). Even those in the UT desert where they're constantly being junkyard-trolled and tossed into ersatz recovery vehicles (so lots of exp)... plenty of home wrenches put them together wrong, and find out in the middle of Bum****, Egypt on some dune

Thanks Isaac & ETC for the skinny on autos in semis -- had wondered for a while now why mfrs hadn't used autos in long-haul commercial vehicles until just recently. The notion of controlling two gearboxes to get 80K lbs of semi up a hill... seems a skill you need some seat time to master. They are hauling a shite-tonne of weight tho

 

The thing that really freaked me out is when the automatic 18-speed automatically shifts into neutral and coasts down slight inclines. To be honest it makes sense now that I understand how and why it does that. What was really fun was to take the boss for a spin and watch him freak out.

Driving a non-synchronized transmission does require a bit of skill. I guess that now that trucks are going to automatics and are even coming with things automatic braking my skills aren't as needed as they used to be. Time to look for other types of work I guess.