GearMaster grabs a gear

GearMaster International
GearMaster International is offering the GearMaster II, the latest generation of the company’s flagship product. The GearMaster allows semi-truck drivers to virtually see inside their transmission while they are driving. It is a visual method of displaying what goes on in a transmission and what the relationship is between engine speed and vehicle speed.

By referring to the GearMaster’s interactive graphic display, a driver can instantly and intuitively observe which gears are available to him and how fast the engine needs to be going to shift into any of those gears. It can be used with any truck on the road and can accommodate up to 20 gears. The device presents a visual synchronization of available gears on its graphic display. Whenever a number is aligned directly above the arrow, the engine and vehicle speed are synchronized for that gear.

The GearMaster can also function as a digital tachometer and speedometer, optionally configured to display engine speed (rpm) and vehicle speed (mph). For example, if a driver were approaching the crest of a downgrade and wanted to be in fifth gear, one glance at the display would immediately indicate that he/she could not engage fifth gear without over-speeding the engine, grinding the gears, or both.

The GearMaster II incorporates several significant improvements over the original instrument, including: auxiliary electronic box has been eliminated, thus reducing the complexity of installation and the space required; Both hardware and software have been modified to enable the GearMaster to receive engine and vehicle speed information through the ECM data port, reducing installation and calibration time to less than 15 minutes and has enabled the GearMaster to be installed on virtually any heavy truck; The new unit retains the ability to receive speed and RPM information from the senders on which the older system was based. This means that the GearMaster II can be directly retrofitted to earlier installations as well as to trucks without an ECM or data port.