death of the manual in pickup trucks

[Rough Edge racing]

FIL had a Comfort Lite fifth wheel he towed with a Rampage.  Yep, the little FWD pickup based on a car.  5sp and clutch.  He pulled that thing over 15k miles.  Only burned out one clutch.  That was a sharp incline from a campground onto a highway and no room for a running start.  FWIW, I don't think an automatic would have done any better, probably would have burned up the fluid in the transmission if it had tried the same thing.

  When you say Comfort Lite fifth wheel you mean a 30 foot fifth wheel travel trailer weighing over 6000 pounds being towed by a 2700 pound FWD?

[charlie b]

Nope, a 19ft about 3000lb.

[Tobit]

My son is soon to need his first vehicle and it's down to a used Jeep or truck.  It will be a manual simply because he should know how to drive one and I miss them.  All of our other vehicles are autos.  Automatics have become the Achilles heel of used car buyers.  Had to replace one in my '95 Volvo wagon, (210,000 miles  and my '07 F150 (140,000 miles) within the last two years.  The new '07 Grand Cherokee I had as a company car had chronic TCU problems that the dealer couldn't fix. (Well documented on other forums) and my neighbors Jetta wagon's transmission failed around 80,000 miles.  She has to run the engine for 10 minutes before the car will move.

After my Cherokee experience, when I hear manufacturers talking about 8 and 10 speed autos I cringe.

Tobit

[Rough Edge racing]

My son is soon to need his first vehicle and it's down to a used Jeep or truck.  It will be a manual simply because he should know how to drive one and I miss them.  All of our other vehicles are autos.  Automatics have become the Achilles heel of used car buyers.  Had to replace one in my '95 Volvo wagon, (210,000 miles  and my '07 F150 (140,000 miles) within the last two years.  The new '07 Grand Cherokee I had as a company car had chronic TCU problems that the dealer couldn't fix. (Well documented on other forums) and my neighbors Jetta wagon's transmission failed around 80,000 miles.  She has to run the engine for 10 minutes before the car will move.

After my Cherokee experience, when I hear manufacturers talking about 8 and 10 speed autos I cringe.

Tobit
 

The two Jeep Cherokees I own now are both 5 speeds just like the several before that...The Japanese built transmission is long lived but second gear sychro gets weak....Never had any trans or clutch problems at 150 K miles and 20 years old...
 Our daughter recently retired her 97 Cherokee with 390K miles , It still ran fine but too many deer hits and unscheduled off road adventures has taken it's toll.....She bought it with about 250K miles on it and appeared to have the original engines and driveline, never a problem with the old 4 speed automatic....

[Kentktk]

After my Cherokee experience, when I hear manufacturers talking about 8 and 10 speed autos I cringe.

Tobit

No doubt an ECM failure ( and they will ) will be huge dollars!