A CLUTCH OF CLASS
Volvo’s dual clutch system is clever technology. No question.
Launched in Sweden in 2014, which suggests any bugs have been well and truly ironed out by now, it remains a world first for heavy-duty trucks. As Volvo declares, “Transmissions with dual clutches are used in cars, but Volvo Trucks is the first and only manufacturer in the world to offer a similar solution for series-produced heavy vehicles.”
Built on the remarkably, and deservedly, successful I-shift 12-speed transmission, the dual-clutch assembly makes Volvo’s supremely smooth and responsive automated shifter even smoother and more responsive. Some of the time!
But how much smoother and how much more responsive?
A little or a lot, the answer depends largely on where the truck is and what it’s doing.
Like, there were numerous occasions on a recent drive of a 13-litre FH540 B-double outfit when it was difficult to determine if there was any practical difference between this dual clutch version and the standard I-shift gearbox I’ve come to know and admire over many years in many trucks. Not just Volvo trucks either, but in the same transmission’s other identities as the Mack mDrive or UD’s strangely titled Escot.
Yet at other times during a busy stint that included hauling the 55-tonne combination up the formidable Toowoomba Range and down the unforgiving Cunningham’s Gap, the spontaneity of shifts through the dual clutch system was nothing short of outstanding.
Put simply, in the fluctuating flows of suburban traffic, where any modern automated shifter will routinely deliver multiple skip-shifts as traffic teeters between stop, go, fast and slow, the dual-clutch system showed little, if any, advantage over a standard
