Note to self: Don't mud bog in reverse at max speed with six giant tractor tires.
My main goal with this truck is to build a bulletproof RV with a slide-in camper. Secondary would be to pick up steel from the steel yard & lumber from Home Depot. I might have a load of gravel once a decade or so. I do run to the dump quite a bit. So that big bed with a dump lift will be nice. I also want it easier to drive for the wife when we go camping & for city driving. An automatic transmission & power steering will go a long way towards accomplishing this. So as long as I don't go nuts on the pedal it looks like the TC should be fine. Maybe a bungy cord from my knee to my big toe would be a good failsafe
I'm not sure about the valve body connection. Right now it's still pretty greasy due to some kind of old hydraulic leak (hydro or tranny fluid). As you can imagine, a garbage truck has lots of hydraulic lines running many different places. I'll check this weekend on the valve body actuator. I'm assuming from your post this would imply round=vacuum=mechanical"ish" shifting and rectangular=electronic from sensors?
I was pretty excited when I found the Allison 3560 so cheap. The Cummins, radiator, crank-mounted hydraulic pump, and power steering box are just icing on the cake.
The Allison does not have a transmission retarder. Instead Cummins and Jacob came up with some kind of exhaust brake that sits in the pipe right after the turbo. For city driving I was hoping the Allison had a retarder. I suppose I could try to source one out, but I'm not sure if it would be worth the money or effort.
I'll post the engine swap pics sometime next year when I do it. Right now I'm just trying to get 7000 lbs of garbage truck out of the back of the Deuce. I think you'll find it interesting. I plan to do a crew cab with a full-sized bed. Crew cab for comfort. Full bed for slide-in camper. That full 12' bed is just too darned useful to chop up. I played around with some Photoshop ideas & the full bed crew cab just looked better as well. But that would require moving the rear spring hangers back several feet. High centering on humps then becomes a problem as well (although I think I've already worked out a solution to that, tentatively). Needless to say this is a project that will occupy much of my free time for the foreseeable future. But, that's half the reason why I bought it.