Driving a deuce is like driving any full sized pickup truck from the 1960's with a manual transmission, and manual steering. The deuce's steering is generally manual, but the steering wheel is huge to give you extra leverage. They are slow, lumbering beasts. It sometimes seems like it takes the entire duration of a traffic light to get across the intersection. Making a sharp right hand turn at a stop sign will take a lot of revolutions of the steering wheel, and if you let the deuce get going too fast, you will end up in the oncoming lane before you have fully made your turn. You won't be able to turn the wheel if the truck is stopped. It isn't good for the truck to even try. You will learn to like Low range 1st/Reverse gear for maneuvering.
The transmissions are truck transmissions at their very heavy best. You don't just slam them into gear, you have to move the shift lever very deliberately. To go from first to second, you press in the clutch, press the lever straight up to neutral, and pause, slide it over to the second gear slot, and apply pressure straight up, and when it wants to, it will go up into second... release the clutch... None of this diagonal shifting stuff you can get away with on passenger car transmissions. The clutch, and brake pedals, push down to the floor, not back to the firewall. You will have to train new muscles.
Like most large trucks of the era, turn signals don't automatically cancel. They do have a very bright green light that flashes in your face as they blink, so you should notice if you leave them on.
From the driver's seat, deuces feel like a full sized pickup truck. Because the cab is narrow, and you are up high looking over the fenders, they seem much smaller than they really are. And they are much shorter than most any commercial cargo truck you will find... dump truck sized.
Although they are slow, 45MPH is comfortable, highway driving is a breeze! They just go and go and go!
You MUST wear hearing protection. If you don't you will end up stone deaf. They are painfully loud inside. The toll booth operators put their hands over their ears when I pull up.... but not to worry, they get their revenge by charging you for 3 axles.
Repairs are simple. Everything weighs 2x what it does on a pickup truck. About the only part you won't be fixing generally is the injection pump. It is not that it is complicated, but rather that it requires special test equipment to set it up. The manuals are excessively detailed. They only thing they don't tell you is why things are done the way they are... that isn't something you are supposed to know, I guess.
Parts are difficult. You won't be finding them at your local NAPA, for the most part. You will learn to love/hate ODIron, Spruce Mt. Surplus, Saturn Surplus, TMJ Murray, ...
-Chuck
