What do you think or prefer, the monitrol or standard shifting lever for forward or reverse? Mixing both into the same fleet of trucks hasnt been good for us. New hires seem to have issue with monitrol while old timers love them. I ended up removing all the monitrols and converting to shift lever.

The Duramatch 2 does have the problem, as a previous reply described, they do work extremely hot in certain applications and overheat. Having the oil cooler under the radiator also compounds the problem by also transfering the heat to the engine which will also overheat. The inching set up can be very erratic and dificult to get a smooth operation and its also very jerkey when changing to second speed. These can all be smoothed out by changing the parameters, but give it a week or so and they all come back.
But the most worrying problem try sitting on one of these, dont touch any controls except selection of a direction, the truck will then drive off in the opposite of what has been selected until the pedals are pressed, give it a go amazing.
having said that I am not aware of any internal failures that has required a transmission repair.

Im not trying to start a transmission war lol, simply stating my Cats (2001)and the newer (2007) GP40K's 9k lifts, work in the harshest conditions and have held up great. They have clearly in our experince eliminated any Linde salesman gimmick of stating "we have no transmission or brakes" therefor buy me. I am also very happy with Cat allowing us to purchase the Hitachi 2000 to run diagnostics on the TB45, and liked the article I read where Cat is insourcing japanese manufacturing and netherland manufacturing back to texas. google it. They also celebrated their 350,000 lift truck made.

The NACCO Transmission is the BEST on the Market. I have sold them from 2004 until today, and we have NEVER Lost One. These rumors are ridiculous.....

One of my accounts runs 24/7. 15,000 hours in three years is not uncommon. The textronix trans is the only way to go. Sounds like somebody is using a standard trans in a textronix application. Textronix trans are built like tanks.

apoligize for bumping this thread up, just realized the date. Still I answered your question Mr. Russia

I service accounts with larger Cats, 9k-15.5k all running the powershift transmission 1 speeds. I couldnt ask for a better transmission, as they are holding up to pushing and pulling paper in a paper factory and wallboard mill. They use paper bale clamps with 1500lb bales of cardboard and drive around the plant balesweeping, or other words pushing loose pieces of cardboard into piles, and pushing sometimes up to 6 bales into a ramp (beater), 24-7, over 600 hours a month, keytroller states 80 starter starts per day, and had no failures until (only one) they hit 15k hours or one hit a pole head on, cracked tranny case in half.

Could you explain the differences between cat`s power shifting transmission and duramatch?

what company out there has better tranmissions, I thought Duramatch was number 1, who is in the Toyota trucks?

who are alternative forklift transmission makers?

phil. watch out what you say on this forum.big brother is watching this website.i had tip tip off from high up the tree if you get my meaning.cheers

I

Craig,

I know of 4 LARGE National Account customers that have had so many problems with the Hyster Fortis that they are cancelling orders left and right. The truck runs extremely hot in applications where the truck runs over 3,000 hours per year. I'm talking H-O-T!. I will not name the companies that I know of but you should check around.

I will tell all of you now , I have had units in the field for 2 + years as of current with this transmission in it , and I am scared. I have had 0 work other then basic Pm service and two little minor issues that the factory updated parts on...6800 + hours of use and no service work....This might be a bad thing since we all know that the lifeblood of a forklift company is service work...This thing is holding up very well.. I wish I could have said the same thing about the old XM series..They were terrible. I need them back though so I have some more service work...oh well at least I still can work on the other brands....
Former Baker,Allis Chalmers,Raymond,Yale employee...

Well, I left barlow handling as they obtained that range of trucks, but It sounds very like the Jungheinrich/Boss hydrostatic transmission set up.
Swash plate pump, hal sensor mounted comunicating the angle back to programable card( set up with lap top) hyrdaulic motors mounted on the axles with 2 multi pack clutches working as the brakes, (think of it as wet air brakes, failing to safe.)
the main issues they had with the systems was they used a pot rather than a hal sensor to start with and it got smacked all the time by debris and put the pot out of range and the truck stoped and the brakes slam on. Drive configuration is adjustable to mimic the Lindi set up and also to operatie like a conventional powershift trany, it also featured a 5 mode switch that you could program different drive characteristics viv the laptop.
from what I saw of the Hyster(and it wasnt much of a look to be fair) it shared much of these characteristics,
I hope it fairs better than the XM range did when it came out of the factory, what disapointment that was.....
Bring back the HH range or the XLs any day of the week...
0-0

forktrkman is absolutely correct. Nacco is in serious trouble with this truck.

Most Hyster dealers sell the entry level units that don't have the higher priced features and transmission so the problem has been mostly unheard of. These units in question were sold through major accounts. As a Hyster regional rep told me a couple of years ago the Fortis was a try at copying the Linde hydrostatic drive units with its outstanding features but they tried to accomplish it with software not a hydrostatic drive. When I was with Hyster in the 80's before Nacco the plan was to bring out hydrostatic drive forklifts due to its superior drive system. But non the less to keep pricing low they abandoned that idea.

Are you sure? If NACCO was having these problems wouldn't they have surfaced sooner? This is the first I've heard of this.

Hyster is having major problems with this transmission. GP is sending units back and looking at legal action if needed. Hyster tried to emulate a Linde hydrostatic design with poor results.

I believe that for the cooling system in these trucks there is a two piece radiator, an upper and lower, that can be replaced individually with the trans cooler on the bottom. So basically, the engine cooling and trans cooling are completely independent from each other.