Snowplowers Input Needed

irengineer · August 13, 2008

Snowplowers,

For those of you with the 6-speed transmissions, with either the Duramax / Allison LCT1000 or the Vortec / GMPT 6L90, are there any thoughts on how you would like to see the transmission operate differently specifically for snow plowing?

I'm thinking of a specific snow plowing mode in which maybe you would want some specific behavior from the trans, like limiting top gear, or changing the shift points, or both.

If you're constantly shifting between reverse and drive, and want to limit your top gear in drive, you could move the lever to "M" but that requires a bit more finess (which might be an issue at 3am) and then tapping to the range limit with the tap switch.

Just wondering if you've got any ideas that would help you make the job a bit easier.

(This question might also apply to 15 series snow plowers in the near future)

Thanks.

IRE

Kodiak450 · August 13, 2008

Top gear? What are you plowing a street? If you are concerned about the 6 speed, just use the 1-2-3 gears, that will limit the gears. Most guys plow driveways on average, and I would say reaching top gear is rare as the distance most driveways are, are short. Same theroy as you getting in your vehicle and driving to the mailbox, are you gonna go through all those gears to get to the MB? No. I personally wouldn't use D in a 6 speed to i really plow, I would limit it to 3 or 4 if the vehicle has a 4. For the really heavy snow and stacking, i would stay in either 2 or 4x4 low if I really neede alot or torque. Most importantly, don't forget to keep yout truck running most of the times, even though you have a tranny cooler, you want to make sure it cools down correctly before shutting down the truck after alot of plowing.

But like I said, going throuhg all 6 gears in a DW plowing is kinda not gonna happen due to lack of driving distance, except maybe when you stack the snow and get on the gas and try to force he snow higher up the pile. I always make sure I have tow haul mode activated as soon as I start driving with plow on. Plowing can take it's toll on a truck and a truck is your life line when you have a snow plowing route.

irengineer · August 13, 2008

Hey Dave (and others),

Apparantly I did a poor job phrasing my question.

First, please consider this as a request for input on how you might like your trucks transmission to work better or differently specifically to make snow plowing easier. If you can't imagine any improvements that's ok too. I'm not looking for advice on how to plow with my truck just soliciting input on how your truck or a future truck might work better for you :-).

When I refer to "limiting" the top gear I understand that you don't "want" to be in the higher gears as you plow, and if you're plowing driveways this wouldn't likely be an issue, but when you move the lever from R to D all 6 gears are available. For someone doing commercial type of plowing, like maybe a large parking lot (and time is money), they may have enough speed for the trans to shift to a higher gear than they would desire. The trans could conceivably shift to 4th or maybe even 5th gears when you'd really prefer it to not shift beyond 3rd. Of course, if you moved the lever past "D" and into "M" you could tap up or down as necessary to M3 which would limit your top gear to 3rd, but that seems a bit cumbersome to do every time you shift from a reverse to a forward direction. Besides when moving the lever from R to D or M there is a "gate" that stops the lever at D and requires the lever to be moved towards the steering wheel slightly to move into M. Again, I'm thinking the repetitive nature of this movement could get old in a hurry.

Your usage of Tow Haul makes a lot of sense, the shift points are already pushed out a fair amount. But for plowing would you like them to be pushed out even further? What if the current T/H switch allowed selection of either T/H or Snow Plow Mode and the snow plow mode had pushed out shift points AND limited the top gear available (in "D") to say 3rd gear? Any advantage there?

These specific examples may or may not be an issue for anyone. No problem either way. But if there is something that you could envision that could be done differently to help, let me know, it just might end up in a future truck someday ;-)

Just looking to get some good conversation going to generate some ideas.

Thanks.

Q101ATFD · August 19, 2008

The two things I can think of...

First, maybe have a "memory switch" for the shift selector mode. So when you go from R to M, it remembers the top gear that you had selected. Maybe something like holding the T/H button for 5 seconds when you're in M and the 6 5 4 3 (2) 1 turns into a 2 with a circle around it, or it just shows " (2) " or " Mem 2 ". Personally, I don't really go fast enough for it to shift past 2 or 3, but it could be good for other things too besides plowing.

Second, I forget how it's setup now, but in S/P (Snow Plow ) mode, have the torque converter locked 100% of the time.

Kodiak450 · October 22, 2009

Now that I think of it, it would be alot cooler if they made a foot switch you could depress with your foot to throw it into reverse. I have a huge condo lot and alot of commericial lots I plow and shifting back and forth to reverse to drive is tire some after awhile. I really enjoy plowing the private roads the best. They are easy and don't require constant reversing.