after years of dreaming about it I finally saved one of these trucks out of a field in San Antonio we've got it all packed up and ready for inspection I plan to haul scrap iron with it I've never driven a two speed or anything this big before so far I've managed to Lumber around the block a few times but getting a hang of the multiple shifts is proving to be difficult thanks for your video I can't tell you how many times I've watched it trying to learn how to do this
Once you get the hang of it It's no different than driving a big rig just have more gears with a big rig this being a 4 speed with a split axle it's basically a 8 speed when you split gear
Thank you so much for doing this video. There is a guy with a 60s model C- Ford cab over And he was going back into lower gear with it in high range on two speed rear. He told me it was because of gearing on the rear. I always shifted like you did. My loads were always a Trailer with 16 thousand pound backhoe, sometimes even a load of Dirt,most of the time just wood for shouring on are Ditches. Supplies for job. Very seldom running light. That F-600 big GAS pot Ford V-8. Have had the Luck of Driving the 5 speed/ 2 speed rears. And one company had a GMC with a 5 & 2 speed rear with a 4-71 Detroit Boy talk about the power on that, never a LACK of no matter what it hauled. Are tow for backhoe was a C-750 Ford with 5 & 2 speed rear. It was a short cab, just a trailer low boy It had the big Gas engine Ford put in those C cab overs. Also drove a F-700 with a 5 & 2 speed rear with a standard 4 yard dump box, or 26 thousand pound type Truck. Vac assist brakes. On my uncle's F-600 first one I drove, would get grinding or noise from spit shift. Never knew why back then. You doing this helps young People understand the why as to the design of a gear shift, for caring the heavy Loads. Or if you traveled Light, like going back empty, no full loads each way.
Oh the sound of that six and those whining gears is music to my old ears!!! I was taught to just let off the gas to shift from low to high, but pushing in the clutch is probably easier on the diff. Letting off the gas increases the vacuum enough to operate the diaphragm to shift the diff. I learned how to drive on a '63 C10 pickup and I learned how to shift the axel on a '53 Chevy fire truck.
Great video. Brings back a lot of memories. I'm 65 and remember when my dad had the exact same model truck with 2-speed axle. He bought it new and used for hauling lumber at the lumberyard he owned along with my uncles.
Thanks for sharing this. I've always wondered about those. I've driven tractor trailers for years, and the high/low are in the transmission rather than the axle. Similar, but a little bit different than the modern-day trucks that I'm used to with 10 and 13-speeds. Thanks again. Great video you made there. Learned something new today!
I just got a ‘67 F600 today and drove it home. I think it was stuck in low. Never felt the rear end change. At least now I know I wasn’t missing the just of how to do it! Wonderful video!!! Thanks man.
Interesting the 5+2's I've driven were air shift, but I never threw it after the shift, I always did it simultaneously. One truck had a bad line or the cylinder was going bad because every once in a while it'd get stuck between gears.. then you're floating in neutral until it catches... sometime it was graceful, other times it would spin the tires or lock them up! It was a treat to drive!
Man that’s a pretty old truck. I used to drive an old 66 GMC straight truck split axle every day when I worked for Sun Drop Bottling Co in Gastonia NC and it was actually fun to drive other than the shared power steering/break pump. That was completely strange as hell. You could turn and you could stop but you cannot stop while turning. Lol The whole damn truck would jerk back and forth so back causing your drink pallets to fall off the racks in your bays. Very messy when you roll up your bay doors at a vending stop! Great vid, great memories. Thanks
thank you for taking back to when i was 16,17,18 years old and working for my dad and he had a couple if 3 ton with buckets( to lift a man up to 70',) so the trucks had the 2 speed rear ends, and when i drove them ,load or not i always went through the gears as much as possible . what fun! thanx.! oh ,and the switch you are using was the same i used!
I'm not sure what type of shifting mechanism they were using in 86. It might be electric and I believe you drive those a little different but I have zero experience with them. A lot of these trucks actually have shifting instructions printed on the roof or on the visor. Might be worth looking into. Congrats on the new purchase and have fun with it!
Good stuff! 🤩 I have a 51 REO that has a 5sp & 2sp rear, but the axle is controlled from the lever on the dash...just logistics.🥰 My 1st gear is rather granny and using low range made it wind out , getting nowhere. My wrecker would pull just about anything as long as you didn’t stall the engine.🧐 I’ve pulled buses, tractor trailers...even when it lifted my front end off the ground. I haven’t thought about that for some time.😯Thanks!👍🏻
nice video, thx learned something! Older guys in a rural coffee shop just were talking about driving 2speed-axle buses and trucks. Felt like bringing myself up to speed. Now if i ever am in a pinch and only have a 60s era chevy or 70s dodge schoolbus i'll be set xD
Thank you sir for solving the mystery of the split shift switch to me. I ran a C-60 like this for awhile years ago building a golf course and I always wondered what the switch did, it was broken on our truck and stayed down, I remember when we took it down the road to get gasoline it wouldn't go over about 25 mph tops, now I know it's because it was stuck in low gear lol...
So weird...my boss is actually buying a C60 and he had no clue how to drive it..I'm 24 and had to show him haha but I didn't quite have it down but now watching this video I understand
This slit axle is how I learned to drive trucks when I was 11 years old. My uncle had a '66 c60 with a diesel engine, diesel was 10 cents a gallon back then. I learned on the open fields of San Diego, back in the day when there was lots of agriculture, dairies, chicken ranches and horse ranches. So there was plenty of fertilizer to be delivered to the farms that grew vegetables. This truck had a fertilizer spreader, so the business got plenty of work. I loved the summer time, my Great-Grand-Father had a rule that we could start driving at age 12. I was lucky though, I have an uncle that is a little over a year older than me. So when he turned 12 I got to drive as well, cause my Great-Grand-Father didn't want me to feel left out and I was his first Great-Grand-son. Since the truck was burnt up, I'd love to do a restoration on it and make it a tow truck. To haul cars to the car show. Be even better if the cars were mine :-D the interesting thing is that uncle that is a little over a year older then me, has restored cars.
Str8 Street Hows it going....just an idea, but full restorations can be pretty hard. Would just getting it operational and safe be easier ? Wash it off and keep the surface rusted paint , but go thru all the mechanicals and make sure they are tip top. You said it had some fire damage...wipe it off and blow some primer over it. That’s still a lot of work, but can be more rewarding for someone tackling a restoration for the 1st time. Not sure about your background, I’ve been around and it seems like I know too much to get involved with one right now. Like I’d know what I didn’t do that’s incorrect. But I guess there’s many levels of restoration and I was just thinking it would be a full anal chalk mark deal, I’m probably stupid for assuming, everyone knows that ol saying
Hi same set up over here in uk back in sixties up till early seventies our family film ran Gmc Bedford trucks mostly with two speed axles 'my flatbed 16ton rigid truck shift was the same pattern as yours except from 4low you went to 5low then 4high to 5high really liked the air shift compared to the electric 2speed . Still have a seventies semi truck with it on today... Steve.
Really??? Nowadays we have bigger trucks with automatic transmissions and diesel engines, far more powerful and fuel efficient then the ones in the "good old days"
I remember riding school buses and my uncle had a few ford 3 tons I rode along in and helped worked on. That's a nice familiar sound I haven't heard in a long time. A 427 on propane used to run cheaper than a V6 camaro on gas back then
I currently own a 1966 F-600 with a 300 IC motor, a 435 New Process transmission and a Eaton 2 speed rear axle! One of the most dependable trucks ever built! I can also drive, drove a getaway car in a armed robbery before I was old enough to have a driver's license! lol 😎 🇺🇸
Interesting video, we always had a few 2 sp axle trucks on the farm. I simply set the control in low range and then went through the gears on the main. Only split into high on the last gear. then use the 2 sp as needed on the road. A lot simpler and easier on the truck.
That's the only way I have seen it done until I ran across these videos. It could be my imagination but the trucks appear to gain speed more by shifting the two speed rear end each time the transmission is shifted.
cheers man that was great, Ive a 69 ford D series 4 speed with a 4 pot diesel. is proper underpowered an slow at 50mph flat out, with the wind behind you lol. Might keep an eye out for a 2 speed axle ;)
A friend of mine years ago drove a cabover freightliner with a 5 speed and a 3, yes 3 speed rear axle. Haven't seen one of those in 40 years. 2 speeds are very common on 2 tonners though.
My great grandfather had a 65 C30 292 4 speed log truck...556 gears I believe...Learned to drive in that ole gem...45 was about all you wanted to do on the highway :-)
I have an 83 IH s1724 it's got the 392 V8 w 5 sp split rear. I've never seen how it was supposed to be done, and I'm a trucker lol my big rig is an IH as well but thanks for this video. Can't wait to get that old lumber yard truck back in service
Used to haul 80 cross ties on a 1976 C60 with a 366ci engine, 5speed with the 2 speed rear end. Handy since I was usually 3-4K overweight. (Hey when you’re 16 and your dad says go, you go)
Before we sold the trash route, we had an '84 Ford F-600 for a little while with a 370 and a "working 5 speed" with 2 speed rear end. It took a little getting used to shifting it in the bigger gears, because you had to shift 4L, 5L, 4H, 5H to grab all the splits correctly. Most of the time I drove, I just ignored the 4th split to H, and just left it in L, then grabbed 5L then shifted to 5H. It also had an electric shift motor that had to be pre-selected every time. If I did it like in your video here, the rear end wouldn't shift correctly, and grind like crazy til everything for sync'd up.
Thanks for sharing a awesome video you should be a truck driver I have a 1976 Ford F600 dump truck not the fastest trunk around but one of the strongest truck around
I'VE BEEN DOING IT WRONG ALL THESE YEARS!!!! I have three BIG trucks with two speed axles... I can't thank you enough. I thought you picked high or low range when stopped and were just stuck there while you drove. I usually ran low range when loaded and high range empty. I would stop, go to neutral, pick range, then work through gears and stay in the chosen range. WHY DIDN'T I LOOK INTO THIS SOONER?!?
I have 2 trucks the same except I put in 350s in both. Rarely would you shift the axle in super low, in fact you would stay in low axle until 3rd gear. These trucks are geared low in the diff that most times if you are empty you can turn the corner in 4-hi and not even downshift. I like the 5 speeds with the 2 speed where you go 4-low to 5-lo then to 4-hi then 5-hi.
I heard a myth that ford actually made a 2 speed accle dully pickup for running around the factory yard it never went into production because they thought it would be to complicated for the general public from what i ve heard from some old timers I talk too they said it had 445 hp and over 700 lbs or torque with a v8 capable of pulling 32,000 lbs it was a gas version of thier powerstroke . They used it to move around train cars full of parts . Or used to move truck frames on flat beds across the yard .
I have a 65 C80 with a 409, Spicer 5 speed and a 2 speed rear. You’re not kidding about the low gearing. It’s got 7.17s in high range and 9.77s in low.
Did anyone mention the splitter in the speedo cable necessary to keep the speedometer accurate. Ours quite working and was stuck on the high side so the speedometer is only accurate in high range. In low range it reads probably 10 to 15 mph to fast.
Thank you the video - it brings back memories. My dad had a couple of farm trucks similar to yours. I remember asking what that control was and his vague description, but I had no idea it was vacuum operated. What to the knobs labeled "HARSH" control?
Brad Lemmond some are vacuum operated others are electric. The two knobs you speak of are what controls the Hoist. The knob on the left engages the PTO. The novel on the right is the control valve for the hydraulics.
I've always been a fan of the 292. It won't run as fast on the open road as the V8 gas trucks of the day but they had a super broad torque curve and would handle hills better than the 350 or 366 powered trucks. Very smooth motor as well. When everything is right, they just purrrrrr....
To keep folks from mistaking kit for a Eaton Fuller Roadranger 10 spd. you'd have to draw a shift pattern that has either 1 with a small H and L then 2 and so forth in the usual shift pattern , "1H" on top of "1L", and so on in the usual shift pattern till "H and : in top", or 2 on top of 1 to 10 on top of 9 with R 1 and 2 in the usual places above 1 (if this is a five spd.plsu the 2 spd.I don't know if this is 4 or 5.)
I have an automatic, 1973 1 ton Chevy Class B RV built on a van chassis, 350 V8. It is geared too low, standard differential, 55 m.p.h. sounds like about 2500 r.p.m or higher. I'm looking to find a 2 speed rear end, OEM. My thought is that I would mostly drive it in high gear, and switch to low when I was towing. I suppose the gearing in high, and in low could be planned, to make this practical. I drove a very large modern, (for the time), flatbed with a 2-speed rear end when I was a boy, no instruction, just, "Jump in that truck, and haul it where I say). That was about 1977.
I know someone who has a 1967 C60 dump truck that he bought new it was a special order 427 with FACTORY AIR they had to make up components from the parts bin for the air... this guy is meticulous and you could eat off tires
Can you drive it for daily driving like you did when crossing the intersection with standard 1, 2, 3, 4 but then at highway speed shift rear to and get kinda like an overdrive gear? If that makes sense. I have a 86 Bronco with 4spd from 300 6 and would love to have a 5th gear for highway speed.
Just auxillary gears basically correct? We had an international with 4 auxillary, so 5x4. 1st and 1st is a crawl even higher rpms. Although I don't think we could shift those 4 ranges at speed. Interesting. Good thinking for such an old truck, but good for low horsepower.
I'm not sure if they would be considered Auxiliary gears or not. We just always called on to to speed axle. I know IH had some really strange transmissions back in the day. We had a neighbor that had a 10 wheeler with I believe three sticks coming up through the floor. Pretty interesting stuff.
thats all you have to split is last gear but when you stop for a light or something start off on the low side never start off on high side you could burn clutch
I find this amusing, and i could be totally out of line here, and of course there is absolutely no disrespect meant by this comment... after learning to drive myself in old bangers with 2 speed diffs, joey boxes and all of wich were true crash gearboxes ( square cut gear teeth for those that dont know the difference) i believe you just explained it back to front for a 2 speed diff, and you also wonderfully demonstrated why.. any upshift with a 2 spd diff should be done mid way thru any gear selection, not pre-selected, especially in a crash box, and always using the clutch, as if listening carefully, you can hear that when the vacuum built up with revs, because it was pre-selected it was forced into the disired range, and you can hear the missed meshing as it eventually does mesh. this can cause extreme damage.
when the planetary gears dont mesh clean and smoothly, diff wear is not slow to generate, with addition to a range change, and gear position change, if either dont mest smootly, damage occurs on the forward side of the gear teeth, same applies with downshifting, each time you downshift and you feel that slight grab, thats grabbing the rear or the gear tooth, and this is the worst kind of wear. hope this helps to broaden peoples understandings, and i highly reccomend people look at videos that show how planetartys work in 2 speed differentials.
Scott Nevill you know, you are certainly not the first to say this. There SURELY must be some truth in what you are saying. I'm not sure it applies to this truck though. There is a large sticker on the roof, factory installed that describes how to shift the transmission. It clearly states to shift the axle before the transmission when making a split shift to the higher axle ratio. It also states to shift the transmission first, then the axle when split shifting to low axle. I'll see if I can get a picture of it sometime and post it.
clinkerclint which states exactly what I have just explain mate you what happened in your first shift was a pre selection not expect movement what you're saying by the sticker is a rusted gear shift movement which must be either mid selected or pre-selected that is correct, further to that in early stages of small engine small gearbox and small diff arrays manufacturers made a lot of faults if you research the vehicle specifics there may have been updated recommendations on gear changes etc I'll do some more research on your specific vehicle as well for you if you like
if you would like to speak you can email me if you like. scottnevill82@hotmail.com note to anyone thinking of spamming, I only open this email on a dedicated computer that automatically logs any IP.
Richard Cassel. High first is just barely faster than low first. If you went from low 4th, to high 1st, well, it wouldn't go in gear for one thing and if you did get it in gear, and let out on the clutch, you would probably tear the motor up. These are way different than the semi transmissions you are thinking of.
clinkerclient: I could have used this video 50 years ago when I was 15. I had a special permit to drive our farm truck to the feed mill in town. I got there one day when they were out of a feed additive to go in my purchase. The owner of the mill, not realizing how young I was, sent me in his mill truck (a C-60 with a 4x2 box) 20 miles to his other mill to make a pick up. I was fine going there, I just used the four main gears. Unfortunately for me, they fully loaded the truck so I was forced to use the splitter going home. I tried the low four to high first. Like you said, it just don't work that way. Glad I couldn't force it in, I sure tried enough times. I did finally figure it out and got the truck back where it belonged without much damage to gear teeth.
This trans has extremely wide spaced ratios 7.05, 3.57, 1.7, 1.0 the 2-3 shift is a 53% drop in RPMs and gear reduction. Add in the rear axle shifted in a LHLHLHLH pattern and you get 9.17, 7.05, 4.64, 3.57, 2.21, 1.70, 1.30, 1.00. Under light load it was common to shift either 1L 1H 2H 3H 4H or 1L 2L 3L 4L 4H. Only under heavy load would you use all 8 gears to keep the 292s RPMs up after the shift. This also allows you to pull hills better, only giving up a half a gear at a time as you lose speed.
Hey man I enjoyed that that was cool but I was wondering did you push the clutch in when shifting from low to high and is down shifting the exact opposite? I love old school equipment to me it’s just like you said trucks now a days have way more horsepower than needed but back in the day it took skill and experience to be a professional driver.
I clutch with every shift of the transmission or the axle. As for downshifting, I only downshift the transmission when I'm grabbing gears on a hill. The two speed just takes too long to shift and you lose too much momentum waiting for it to shift. I'll go back into low when I come to a stop or start shifting up again.
