Brought my M109A3 home today!

[sgtrisk]

RE: More pics

Yep, he's already hoping to learn to drive it. He's got a learner's permit now, anyway. I told him this would be a good vehicle for him to learn to drive a stick with!

Oh yeah! Double-clutching! I forgot about that! I was wondering why I had to fight it get it from 1st to 2nd gear (and vice versa).

 

[Stretch44875]

I don't know if all the tach's measure hours at the same rpm. It was printed on the back of mine.

 

[nf6x]

RE: More pics

It does have synchros in gears 2 through 5, so it's quite drivable by somebody who doesn't know how to double-clutch. I went to a trucking school to train for my commercial driver's license (CA requires a commercial class A or B license for the deuce), and they trained me on a small semi tractor with a non-synchro gearbox. Apparently the CA DMV's CDL examiners expect the driver to double-clutch every shift during the test, even if they've been driving crashboxes since the dawn of time and can shift without using the clutch at all. So, they trained me to double-clutch, and it just became habit. I don't have the skill to shift without using the clutch yet.

I think the deuce is pretty easy to learn stick-shifting on. It has enough torque and inertia, and the engine changes speed slowly enough, that it's pretty forgiving of bad shifting technique. I had a little sports car (a Subaru WRX) for a while, and I had to learn to drive stick all over again. It had a very tight hydraulic clutch and a very low-mass engine, so my sloppy heavy truck shifting just didn't cut it!



Maybe you can bribe your son with truck driving lessons to get him to do a lot of the wrench-turning and oil-slogging for you...