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Army truck with 5-speed

Army Truck 5-speed

Posted June 16 2008 04:34 PM by MR Fred Williams 
Filed under: 4x4 Truck Projects, Fred Williams

A few readers have written in looking for the driving impressions of the Operation Army Truck project after I installed an Gear Tech HD NV-4500 manual transmission and LoMax 205 transfer case.  (read the whole install story here).


The fact is that the truck cruises great with the over drive transmission on the highway, but falls on it's face during the second to third gear shifts around town.  I feel the spacing between those two gears is too great since it goes from 3.44 to 1 in second to 1.75 to 1 in third.  Also though the 6.2 diesel has some grunt it doesn't seem to like starting in second gear, especially when the bed is loaded, but first gear is extremely low.  Even though I have these complaints about the transmission gearing I believe the next step is to get more power out of the engine.  It currently has a Banks turbo kit, but I believe I could turn up the fuel a bit more as the truck doesn't even show a wif of smoke under load.  I don't want to have a smoke show, but I think there is more available power under the hood by simply turning up the fuel screw a bit more.  of course this will hinder mileage and that's not what I want to do right now.  Plus as the hot hot hot summer months of southern California decend on us the Army truck isn't looking too inviting, it doesn't have AC, it's not exactly fast off the line, and the manual trans gets the blood pumping more than the old auto.  I think if I lived anywhere other than stop and go traffic los angeles I would love the truck more, so I still recomend the swap, but it still needs a bit more wrenching to get it perfect.

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