Re: Gearboxes and stuff
> Safety is the number one concern; second is reliability;
>third is fuel mileage, and power as a 4th.
So I must ask - why are you so excited about an OD then? Safety doesn't care, and reliability would proably be higher WITHOUT an OD (complexity would be lower, anyhow).
I don't think mileage, typically, will vary a whole lot with an IH truck whether you have OD or not. If you want to lower the highway RPM, go with taller tires or taller gears and just lower your final drive ratio.
If you're not planning on towing a big load often, you probably don't need 4.88 gears in a pickup. ;-)
Besides.. think how much gas (even at today's prices) you can buy for the $2k price tag of one of the OD units!
>Don't need to worry about going faster; I tend to stick to
>the speed limit (drive real conservative for my age)
I don't tend to exceed 75mph, either.. but I'd still prefer we didn't have a speedlimit again. I have a few cars in my fleet that I wouldn't hesitate to take beyond 75mph.
I drove a '99 Outback home from Billings during the winter (of '98/99).. 95mph felt just fine.. even though they closed I-90 behind us.
>How do the Brownie boxes work with automatics?
The Brownie is an aux trans. a 2spd or 3spd manual transmission stuck in the middle of your drivetrain.
you would think you'd need a clutch, and it might help to have one, but typically the brownie doesn't have any syncromesh on the gears, so you have to either sync things up correctly, or double-clutch until you do get the gears lined up right.
I guess that would make the Brownie ideal for a stick-shift 4spd in front of it. With an auto, I'd be temmpted to just shift the brownie into UD, direct, or OD and then let the auto do it's work as usual.
One of the GV/USG boxes can be setup to split-shift automatically with auto - or so I'm told.
More of an issue when pulling a load than just driving around.
I wouldn't object to an OD in any of my 'Binders, but I realize it's probably not worth the bother of hunting one down and swapping it in. If I found a truck with an IH 5spd OD, great.. but, IMO, the benefits are not worth the trouble for the most part
Unless, of course, you have a specific need - like hauling a 20k 5th wheel trailer and needing to split your shifts, or starting off with a truck with REALLY low gears with no source for aftermarket gear sets (like the Loadstar I looked at - the ONLY gearset available for both the Front '70 and the IH rear end is 6.17 ratio, which works out to a 62mph redline speed)