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Alex[_10_]

Mr. Luddite wrote:
On 1/9/2017 6:44 AM, Keyser Soze wrote:
On 1/9/17 6:02 AM, Mr. Luddite wrote:
On 1/8/2017 6:15 PM, Keyser Soze wrote:
On 1/8/17 5:47 PM, Mr. Luddite wrote:
On 1/8/2017 1:06 PM, Keyser Soze wrote:
On 1/8/17 2:20 AM, wrote:
On Sun, 08 Jan 2017 01:02:45 -0600, Califbill

wrote:

I pretty much gave up on stick shifts for daily drivers in
1968. I
remember miles long traffic jams from Laguna Seca raceway via
Gilroy of
stop and go traffic. My leg would start shaking from the clutch
work. And
pulling a race car trailer. Later, drop it in drive, and enjoy
power
brakes.

I still like actually driving my sporty cars. A slush box is
fine in
vans and trucks. I have worked very hard to avoid stop and go
traffic.
I worked midnights for the past 11 years I was in DC. It was great
driving home in empty lanes on the beltway and watching the cars
piled
up going the other way. SW Florida was very rural when I moved here
and a few tricks to avoid the trouble spots kept me moving right
along
most of the time. They did not have much in the way of computer
customers in the tourist areas

I grew up on stick shift vehicles and in the winter I earned a few
bucks
with my dad's jeep and plow. I always thought the stick shift
gave you
more control over what the wheels were doing and made stopping safer
because you could more easily shift the vehicle out of gear.
After my
experience yesterday and today with the 4WD stick shift truck, I
still
think I am correct. Though we only got about 7" today of snow, I got
through a couple of drifts two and three times that height (where
the
roadway was plowed) without problems.

If you are doing some serious plowing, it's hard to hold the plow
controller in one hand, steer with the other and try to shift if
necessary. Auto transmission makes it a lot easier.

Your plow must be more sophisticated than what we had. We had three
levers in the cab of the jeep that controlled the plow hydraulics...up
and down, side to side,and angle. I don't recall fiddling with them
much
while taking a run down one side of someone's driveway.

No, same controls except I don't have "side to side" whatever that is.
Up, down and angle, left or right. The control box is hand held
however, not levers permanently mounted in the cab.

I like manual transmissions in some cars/trucks. My Ranger had a
manual
as did a full sized '86 Ford pickup I had years ago but I didn't
plow or
tow with either of them. For towing and plowing ... especially towing,
the auto is better, IMO, especially the ones they use in the full sized
heavy duty trucks being the Allison in the GM's and Ford's Torqueshift.
Both are designed for towing heavy loads. I saw an ad for the latest
Ford Superduty F-350. It can be equipped to tow 33,000 lbs.

Let's see ... other manual transmission cars I've had fairly recently
include the '67 GTO (factory 4 speed), the BMW Mini Cooper turbo, and
the Porsche (6 speed manual). The Mini Cooper was a fun car .. fast
...
but whenever you really got on it, it tried to make a left hand turn
due
to torque steer. The BMW M5's were a different animal altogether.
They
had a hybrid, dual clutch manual that was electronically controlled for
"auto" operation or you could manually control shifts with the stick or
the paddles on the steering wheel. No clutch pedal though.

I don't really have a need for the F-250 anymore but sometimes only a
truck will do. My wife bought a little egg shaped, 20 ft camper last
summer but it only weighs about 4,000 lbs loaded. She wants me to
trade
my truck for a smaller, compact like a Nissan or Toyota so she can
learn
to tow her little camper around. One nice thing about the F-250 was
apparent yesterday morning when I made a Duncan Donuts run at 6 in the
morning through 17" of snow.

I had driven an auto Tacoma truck at a local dealer's, and I thought the
tranny seemed to spend a lot of time searching for and shifting gears,
but it seemed only a minor annoyance. Since then, Toyota has
reprogrammed the auto tranny. When I was in the mood to buy, there were
hardly any 4WD Tacomas around, and I ended up buying from a non-local
dealer. I tried the manual tranny model before I bought and I enjoyed
the shifting and the control it gave. The tranny does not shift as
smoothly as a manual in a good car, but it is good enough.

I don't tow or plow with this truck, so those considerations weren't an
issue. In decent weather, I do haul a lot of aggie products for my
wife's gardens and the lawn. If we lived in "da Souf," I probably
wouldn't have gone for the 4WD.

If you are going to tow a small camper in the future and want a Toyota
truck, the larger Toyota model probably would be more suitable than the
Tacoma. I don't know anything about the Nissans, other than the Toyotas
seem to outsell them by a large factor.

I think the "larger" Toyota (above the Tacoma) is the Tundra. It's as
big as the Ford I have now from what I've seen. She wants something
smaller. The Nissan Frontier is rated to tow 6K lbs I am told. Not
sure about the Tacoma. The only issue for her is that she has become
accustom to automatic all wheel drive. She has had it in the
Navigators she had and the Mountaineer she drives now. I am not sure
but I don't think an automatic "AWD" mode is available in the smaller
pickups. They have 2WD and select-able 4WD (high and low) like my
F-250 but you have to know when to use it. For her by the time she
realized she needed 4WD it would probably be too late.

Check out the Honda Ridgeliner. Barely a truck but well received.