Everything I own is a manual or started off that way. My ranger now has a C6 with the 302 becuase I could not get a 5 speed at the time. Money might have been a problem. I like having a manual. I think that I have just gotten used to it.

People who say it can't be done should not interrupt the person doing it.

 

i grew up on a farm, and am still on it, everything we owned for trucks were manual. so i just used it all the time. we used our ford to pull the rake when we bailed hay so i got alot of practice on that and of course all the tractors. well i use to drive on my daddys lap till i could reach the pedals myself. i started drivin myself round bout 7 or 8 yrs old. well that was fine till i was 14. now i have about 6-7 yrs under my belt and my buddys dad asked to pull his truck down back so i jumped in and started to panic. i stuck my head out the window and yelled, "Hey doc, wheres the clutch pedal?" that was my first experience with an auto. never knew no different. lol. too funny, anyways if they do away with the manuals that will be the day i say bye bye ms american truck, drive my ford to levy, but the levy was dry, good ol boys drinkin whiskey and rye, singing this will be the day Henry Ford dies.

-Jacksland
God I Love Fords

 

I'D RATHER EAT WORMS THAN DRIVE AN AUTOMATIC!

1999 F150 4x2 Lariat RegCab Shortbed
5.4L 3.55LS Tow pkg

 

well if that aint putting it to ya short and sweet. lol.

-Jacksland

 

You'd have to cut my left leg off to get me to trade my stick for an automatic. Yes, at that point I would find an automatic useful.

 

I don't know, maybe you could rig up some kind of hand operated clutch.

"Like a Rock"; on the sides of roads everywhere.

 

Good Point and worth a try. Let's see, left hand on the clutch lever, ritht hand on the stick shift, hmmm... steer with knee, work accelerator with foot. Might work, but perhaps the clutch lever can be on the stick shift lever--yeah, that's how it's gotta be. Be pretty wild trying to take off on a uphill grade, huh?

 

I was logging and was 40' up in a tree trimmin branches before we dropped it and i got hit with dead branches from up above and the saw cut my safety harness. ill tell you what, thats a real quick way to get to the bottom, lol. well anyways i am now down to one leg. no driving says the doc, hells ya says me. its a stick and im driving it with one leg. so hand shift crap. its real tricky but i think im getting it down now.

-Jacksland
God I Love Fords

 

Shifting with one leg? Wow! Cool! Maybe if it was possible to have a hydrostatic type of trans that you could shift like a manual? Something differant. Just a thought.

Jakegypsum // Ford fleet, soup to nuts.

 

While I'd always rather have a clutch, there was a shifter available in the 70s on one model that could be shifted manually or automatically. Any automatic can be set up that way. All it had was a second shift gate that allowed manual shifting of the automatic without worrying about pushing into the wrong gear. Some sporty cars today have it. But this 70s car has both gates and there was a key to unlock the shifting gate. The ad promoted it for the wife to easily drive while with the key nobody could mess with the husbands performance shift gate. Anyway, with a good manual shifting setup and a good valve body shift kit for rock solid shifts an automatic would be tolerable, but only if absolutely necessary.

 

Now a days in the cars they got them sequential or sport shifters that you can go from manual to auto. my sis just got one in a honda prelude, not too bad.

-Jacksland
God I Love Fords

 

Well, I started out on manuals (just like everybody should!) and did have an interesting time adjusting to an auto. I weened myself by occasionally shifting up from low to 2 to D. I eventually got used to autos (took about a week.) You CAN have halfway decent control of an auto if you know what you're doing. You have a gas pedal that has kickdown points. If you want to pull 1st out to the redline, you hold that gas pedal down. When you want it to shift, you let up. Simple as that. As for these people saying that an auto tries to upshift while they're in mud, why ain't they putting it in low (1)? That'd keep it from upshifting. Seems like common sense to me.
Still, I'd prefer a manual in a lot of situations, especially offroad or pulling anything. For city driving, a manual is inconvenient. You can only get up to third in a 5 speed with granny and then you come to another stoplight.
The determining factor for what I get is money. I'm not buying new trucks. The trucks I get have no "options packages." They have what they have. When I buy a truck, I look at the overall truck and if I can afford it. If it has a manual, so be it, if it's auto, that's OK too. Right now, I have 2 autos. An AOD in the Ford and a THM 400 in the Chevy. Can't complain.

 

If i was buying a new truck it would have a 5 speed manual. Nothing against autos- i've got two of them, both AOD's. Several things i like about manual trannys- Cheaper than autos when you buy a new truck, you can manually brake, they move when you put them in gear. I also dont like it when you have to give an auto lots of throttle when you take off with a load. Manuals are easier to drive when backing up to a trailer. I grew up driving with a clutch. I never drove an auto until i was about 12. Currently we have 1 ZF tranny and 2 NP435's. As for quick shifting, I can shift my dads ZF really quick. The people who can't drive manuals are the people who want 4x4 trucks with ***** and push button control. Both trannys have their place.

 

I love my 5 speed manual tranny

 

Manual's don't have to have a tranny cooler(I don't think), less gunk to clutter up under the hood or break.

Every time I pull up to a stop sign I wish I hadn't listened to everybody tell me "auto's .....", I miss that rev, rev, varoooom.

My 70 F100/C4 will be a 5 speed as soon as I can, I have just about worn the shifter off.

My new truck is a 61 F350 with a 4 speed, it want's 5 but will NEVER go auto.

You just can't enjoy racing around the mountain's twisty road's with an auto and on the dirt road's half the fun is going sideway's and with an auto it never seem's to be in the right gear. With a stick it might be gas clutch brake gas clutch. It just isn't as much fun with the auto and I tend to go too much in a strait line and I hate strait lines.

However I am glad a lot of folk's like auto just like I'm glad a lot of folk's like chevy's. It just mean's that they won't be rasing the price's for me at the junk yard or auction.

So enjoy your auto's even if I will never understand why.

Tom
61 F350
66 F100
70 F100