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Duel


Squire_Dawson

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Yes. Although the driver can over-ride a lot of it, the process just makes it more complicated than having three pedals and a stick.

I wish we could turn the clock back to those days of lorry driver job satisfaction, the more complicated the gearboxes the fewer half wits there were behind the wheel, we've now got to the point that all anyone has to do is select D and press the loud pedal.

 

No different to cars really, when you had lots of horses and RWD without all the traction electrickery, it took a bit of nous and/or self restraint to keep the bloody things on the road, now any bloody fool can act the twat and the electrics sort it all out.

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Unfortunately (for me, in a sense) I studied mechatronic engineering some years ago, so all this automation - let's be honest, robotisation - ought to be up my street. And I understand it technically, I understand why it's there,I see how the operators have been sold it...and I'd rather it wasn't there. To have to over-ride and have to think to consciously counteract a system, in order to just not do something that I just wouldn't have done with a manual box, is just all the wrong way up. For some of us, that system is a failure, it doesn't work.

It may have dragged fleet averages up, but it's dragged mine down. I haven't had 11mpg in years...

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Volvo Engine Brake. It is the dog's bollocks. It's a sort of evolved Jake Brake.

When combined with iShift, there's a 'B' setting on the control stalk, which is the oh shit panic setting. The VEB goes to 75% (of engine power, so a 500bhp engine becomes a 425bhp brake), it redlines the engine, and ups the sample rate of the EBS and ASR, so they go into some sort of bullet time mode, so you can stamp on the brake pedal. It genuinely is spectacular. First time I tried it, I thought I was going through the screen...

Watch the side panel on that truck shaking: that's how hard the chassis electronics are working.

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