during the close of the atca show in macungie last year my tranny went out on my then 96 2500 hd dodge with a automatic hd tranny. i bought the truck new in 96 with eight miles on it which included my test drive during a break in a noreaster snow storm. i know what i hauled in the truck which at times loads exceeded a ton(coal). the truck had 210,000 miles on it when it went out. the 360 took a quart of oil between changes and didnt smoke or leak. id bet donuts to dollars if it was a stick id still own that truck. i live where there are lots of mountains to go over and grew up in the coal region of eastern pa. i cant remember a manual tranny ever going out unless it was seriously abused while haul a load of coal. like bill said "clutches were a common thing to replace" because the operators didnt use proper gear selections while pulling out loaded and smoked them. i have people today saying to me that i dont need to use first gear to pull out. depending on what truck im driving i can pull out in hi range or second low range on the ashton its first low everytime. when i was first learning to drive a firetruck 30yrs ago the captain of the truck said first gear is there for a reason use it.! he was also the boro mechanic which he did all the maintenance on all the trucks from all four stations. one company he replaced the clutch three times and that was a 69 hahn. we had a 66 and its still running(privately owned) and on the same clutch. ive seen certain gears go out but the tranny still worked.
