Many new heavy trucks are automatics, which scares the crap out of me. I live in the mountains and the amount of out of state trucks with smoking brakes is wild.
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Ineresting, I heard that these heavy truck with autos are really the old clutch and gearbox(s), but with pneumatic actuators and computer control.
I always thought that would be a cool engineering project on a car. Never got around to it though...
Only some are self shifting, many are torque converter style autos. The problem comes when crappy drivers do not know how to properly use the truck’s engine braking system (commonly known as “Jake brakes”) in conjunction with these new transmissions.