Transmission

[1500chief@sbcglobal.net]

We just took delivery of a 2010 International truck. It is a 4400 seiries with 2000 gallon of water. It has a 6 speed transmission. My question is should the 6th gear be locked out? We are in southern Ohio nd we have a lot of hills in our area. Our sales rep says we should have the 6th gear locked out to give it more power on the hills. What do you think? Will this help?

[Bushwhacker]

We just took delivery of a 2010 International truck. It is a 4400 seiries with 2000 gallon of water. It has a 6 speed transmission. My question is should the 6th gear be locked out? We are in southern Ohio nd we have a lot of hills in our area. Our sales rep says we should have the 6th gear locked out to give it more power on the hills. What do you think? Will this help?

Depends on the transmission, if its a Allison 3060 Then i would say hell yes, that was a long legged gear box. Try it out with all six, reprogramming is easy enough, if you don't like it, lock it out."

As always, its a good idea to listen to the person that Built it, not necessarily sold it.

[chiefengineer11]

We just took delivery of a 2010 International truck. It is a 4400 seiries with 2000 gallon of water. It has a 6 speed transmission. My question is should the 6th gear be locked out? We are in southern Ohio nd we have a lot of hills in our area. Our sales rep says we should have the 6th gear locked out to give it more power on the hills. What do you think? Will this help?

Locking out 6th won't "give" you any more power. If 6th is too high for what you're doing, just down arrow one time and it will hold at 5th. You could probably have it programmed to go no farther up than 5th unless you push the Mode button. What's the top speed in 6th? 5th?

[npfd801]

We just took delivery of a 2010 International truck. It is a 4400 seiries with 2000 gallon of water. It has a 6 speed transmission. My question is should the 6th gear be locked out? We are in southern Ohio nd we have a lot of hills in our area. Our sales rep says we should have the 6th gear locked out to give it more power on the hills. What do you think? Will this help?

I think there's too many "what if's?" Who built the truck? What's the final drive? Is it limited to 60mph? I drove a couple of demos that had PTO pumps with six speeds, and they did a fantastic job of getting the apparatus up to speed quicker than a comparable rig with five gears available. If the folks that built it specified the chassis to use those six gears to the best advantage within the speed range allowed, I'd say leave it be.

[kuh shise]

1500: Like chiefengineer11 suggested, we have all of our engines set to operate one gear down unless the driver hits the mode button. This is a real advantage in the city because of the hills. 10% grades are not unusual. However for mutual aid we have runs of 20 mi plus, so getting the overdrive gear when on the road helps like crazy.
being one gear down helps to slow things down in traffic so you aren't over running your siren as well.

[1500chief@sbcglobal.net]

We have the Allison 3000EVS_P Transmission. I am going to try to call Allison and get an opinion from them on what we should do.