I would imagine the reasoning for having two second gears is the same reason
Dodge made the full sized Rams engage the drive band at the same time as you
shift into reverse. This softens the gear engagement so you feel less of a
thump when you put it in reverse.
That reason is customer complaints about shift quality. When in reality
these transmissions are really very good and shift quality was not bad
compared to many other brands.
Customers complained about the shifting into reverse and it being harsh so
they made it shift while engaging both circuits in the transmission.
At least in '95 they did this in full sized Rams.
This causes premature wear in the drive band and is not necessary. There's
a simple mod. to fix this. One of my Mopar magazines went through it once.
I wonder if Dakotas do the same thing.
Personally, I wish the people that wanted their transmission to shift like a
Cadillac would go buy a Cadillac.
I'll bet if they were shown the bill for drive band replacement they'd
rather not have it shift into reverse quite so lightly.
--Matt Schroeder
Burnsville, MN
----- Original Message -----
From: <DAK4JLB@aol.com>
To: <dakota-truck@buffnet.net>
Sent: Friday, July 07, 2000 3:13 PM
Subject: Re: DML: Multispeed tranny?
> I heard that Dodge is coming out with a new Tranny for the trucks soon. It
> has 2 2nd gears. It uses one for upshiifts and the other is for down
> shifting. I have no idea why they would do this, just sounds like more to
fix
> to me.
>
> Zeus
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Jun 20 2003 - 11:52:33 EDT