On Oct 4, 4:44?pm, John H. wrote:
On Thu, 04 Oct 2007 15:34:44 -0700, Chuck Gould

wrote:
On Oct 4, 3:35?pm, John H. wrote:
http://tinyurl.com/29egny

Now don't everybody jump at once!

Seems like a fair price, but that stick shfit makes it less desirable
than an automatic as a light duty tow rig.
As we used to say in the car biz; "There's a butt for every seat."
Hope you find the right prospect.

My thoughts are just the opposite. The first gear in this thing is a
'granny'...very low. I start, as per the book, in second gear, unless I'm
towing a load. The manual trans allows me to play the clutch and get
traction, even when the 4WD automatics are sliding into ditches during some
snow.

I wish I could have gotten the 4Runner with a manual trans.

The granny is nice, better than 1,2,3,4 OD. But you alluded to the
weakness in the system with your reference to "slipping the clutch".
Most people will burn out a lot of clutches if they tow very often,
thereby
eliminating any savings in fuel economy or initial purchase price when
compared to the automatic.

While long haul tractors are manual transmissions and are designed
strictly for towing, it's a different scenario entirely. When I
learned to drive in the early 70's we had a Fuller Road Ranger
transmission with 15-gears (not 4-5) so the torque range for each gear
was pretty minimal. By carefully watching the tach we could time the
shifting so that we didn't even need to use the clutch except when
starting or stopping. If I remember correctly the shift points were at
1800 and 2200. To shift from 4th to 5th, for example, you would run
the RPM up to the 2200 level in 4th, pull the shifter into neutral,
back off the throttle to bring rpm down to 1800 and just as it got to
1800 shove the selector into 5th. Going down was the reverse, raise
the rpm to the upper end of the shifting range and then jam the next
lower gear into place. The transmissions didn't have "synchros" in the
typical sense, but the gears were sized so that
they would synchronize with the output shaft at the stated RPM. The
tricky bit with the 15-speed tranny was going between the lower and
upper halves of the shift pattern (Top gears were a repeat of the
lower gears, but with a hydraulic knob pulled).

With 12-18 gears to choose from, a manual is a pretty good choice for
towing. With only 4-5 gears between no-load and 80 MPH- I think the
progressive torque curve of an automatic is a better choice.