I guess you missed the subtle shot at the automatic transmission in that post...

That is what I was getting at with my "required to be able to drive standard to get a license" argument. MAKE people understand what a transmission does by making them do it, and the automatic can be an aid so they don't always have to (but still know how).

stick a new driver in an automatic, and you might as well be handing them a GPS without having used a map first... or giving them a keyboard without handing them a pencil first... "Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you've fed him for a lifetime."

...which will bring up a valid rant on this board... give a man spellcheck before a dictionary, and he'll never type legibly.

 

Then let me be the first one to tell you that I was not pleased with my 7.3 psd. It left me standed at the worst times. Once in the middle of the Golden Gate bridge. It also cost me a lot of $$$$ to get her fixed when she broke down. It got to the place where I could not trust her. The 6.0 has proven to me to be much more reliable. I also get better mpg on the 6.0 than I ever did on the 7.3.

 

I'm sorry, but I've lost all respect for dictionaries when they started allowing words like: "ain't", and "conversate" in them.


That's not going to get them to understand what a tranny does. They'll knuckle down just to pass them exam and then they lose it. My dad calls it "bathtub knowledge". Fill it up and then when your done, let it drain.

My dad doesn't really know what a tranny does beyond the most basic definition, I know less then that, but I know how to drive a stick and so does my dad. In fact, my dad has a manual 03 911 right now(although he actually prefers the LS 460). There are some things that you can do, or "learn" to do and still not necessary know why you need to do it. For example:

People know a long time ago that rotating crops was better then just planting crops in the same spot year after year after year, but they didn't know why it was better until much later, but they still did it just knowing that their yield was better and more consistent then when they didn't do it. You can know to do something, but you may not know why you need to do that something.

I can give a lot of horse training examples for this as well, but I'm sure that'll bore alot of people on here.

 

That's not bad at all. My next door neighbor gets 9 mpg out of his and it's a bone stock regular cab. The majority of our work trucks with the 6.0 are lucky to see 11 mpg.

 

That must be a rare 7.3 then. Browsing the 6.0 forums guys are complaining about 12-13 mpg all the time. Most the of the 7.3 guys would junk theirs if it got less than 17 or 18 mpg.

 

You have to watch out with some of the 6.0 guys. Some of them go by the computer, which if I were to go by the computer, I would be getting 21 or 22. It just can't compensate for all that I've done without myself or someone else tweaking it's parameters. Which that is beyond my knowledge of what to do.

 

I can't tell you how many people I work with that don't even know how to read a map because they rely on their GPS to get them everywhere. Some of them even use it to drive around their home town! Or they will drive somewhere and get there with their GPS and when I ask them how they got there or how to get back out, they can't tell me. They just follow the line on their dash to where it tells them. Then if they have to go back to that same place again, they can't find it because they never paid attention to the first landmark, street sign or anything.

 

Oh, your right that's just foolish. No telling where they can end up if they went exclusively off the GPS.

My worst habit, particularly if it's an area that was one of my childhood stomping grounds, I'll do something like this:"you know the old church that was next to the tree that burned down 5 yrs ago" etc.

 

On a good day I would get 14.5 mpg on my 7.3. That would be unloaded freeway milage. Towing the horse trailer I would be lucky to get 12 mpg. With the 6.0 I get 15.5 mpg combined city hwy and 13 mpg towing the horse trailer. That is with running b100 biodiesel. When I was running dinodiesel the mpg were 1-1 1/2 mpg better.

I will admit that I was one of the rare ones that had problems with the 7.3.

 

Let's be careful. I don't want the OP @ me.

 

All of this debate and such on the merits of automatic only trannies, power everything, gps, and all sorts of other creature comforts is what I call the dumbing down of America. It strikes at the very fiber of what made the USA one of the greatest nations in history. It used to be you had to know how to shift gears with a clutch, manually roll up your own windows, read a map, know how to mathematically calculate how much $ to budget for fuel for a trip, etc. to survive. Now machines do it all for you and you have no idea how that answer was arrived at. It opens the door for someone or power to feed us all sorts of incorrect data and the public wouldn't be any the wiser because they are incapable of reasoning things out with common sense and basic education. THE LACK OF A CHOICE IN TRANSMISSIONS AND OTHER OPTIONS IS TYRANNY! IT IS AN ASSAULT UPON THE BASIC FREEDOMS THAT ALL AMERICANS ARE ENTITLED TO AND MANY AMERICANS HAVE GIVEN THEIR LIVES TO PRESERVE OF EPIC PROPORTIONS.

 

If mine got that kind of mileage it would never leave my driveway. That's why my 97 7.3 has 212k miles on it and my 2000 5.4 only has 35k miles. I get 15 mpg out of my 5.4 and 20-21 out of my 7.3. I won't drive my 5.4 anywhere over about 20 miles one way because of the mpg's.

I go somewhere new with work about every 3 or 4 days and they will leave directions on my desk. Half of the time I just throw them out because they will say something like "turn 3.4 miles before route 607." Really? You couldn't find a road BEFORE where I have to turn? You expect me to go 3.4 miles out of my way to route 607 and then turn around and drive 3.4 miles back to where I was to start with? And where do they get their directions........ GPS lol. It has taken pretty much all common sense out of the equation.

One time at my previous job they told me to go to a job site in Pennsylvania. I asked them where and they said they didn't know. I asked them what town it was in, and they said they didn't know. I asked them what corner of the state it was in, and they didn't know. My only directions were "drive towards Pennsylvania and we will tell what city you are going to when we find out." I got pretty good at finding places with no directions lol.

 

Have you ever heard of a drag strip?
If you were in traffic and it was heavy and moving at a good pace, and the car in front you came to an abrupt stop because it just rear-ended the car in front of it, would you rather just push a little harder on the brake your foot was already resting on or take the time to lift your left foot to the clutch and push it all the way in and take your right foot off the gas and step on the brake also. ( I think you would already be casualty #2)
Also I drive in snow for years and when your truck is ready to slide it won't care what your tranny looks like.

 

Exactly! Here's the most recent (that I know of) example of this....

GPS-led travel goes amiss; 3 lost parties rescued in Oregon - Decaturdaily.com

I regularly use my GPS for longer trips but I program the route I want to take ahead of time and use it just to get a quick visual of "how many more miles to my next turn" and that sort of thing.

I couldn't imagine relying totally on it though.

 

WTF is your left foot doing on the brake!?