Driving in mountains?

Donner is a good example. We spent large portions of it giving the earth and it's gravity whatever it wants to do with that thing, no jaking, no braking, no adding power or any of that just coasted and floated down the mountain.

That was interesting and novel the first time. It's the opposite of taking her up to triple digits seeking out nuetral gravity to try and make that coffee cup rise in holder to negative gravity.

 

It bothers me when I see trucks smoking their brakes down grades that should not be an issue for this reason. Lot's of grades you can ride your brakes down the hill, get things smoking a bit, but not completely lose your brakes and go careening down the hill.

Problem is, if anything happens, like you said, you won't have the brakes needed to deal with it. There are plenty of grades on the roads I tend to run that I can get away with going down at a speed where the jakes won't do the job completely, I may have to hit the brake a couple times, but if I find myself having to hit the brakes more than twice, that third time I tend to get on them and slow down enough to drop a gear so I won't have to use the brakes any more. You never know what's going to happen up ahead.

 

I don't know exactly the limits of the internet, but to lighten things a little bit from first hand experience, there used to be a set of VCR training videos based on Trucker Earl.

One was a mountain scenario with the truck smoking, dashboard lit like a christmas tree and Earl calling to his bunkie who is sleeping to wake up and join him in the massive wreck developing in the windshield of a completely closed mountain downgrade at the bottom filled with EMT, law enfrocement etc.

A little bit of satire, a whole lot of lessons in those old videos. Ive wondered if any survived since then.

 

Many years ago I had a trip to Macedonia from Germany. A road thru Greece to get there was driving 60 miles uphill and the 60 miles downhill with many serpentine curves you couldn't make with an American truck and trailer. Patience, going uphill and downhill with 20 miles per hour, have seen many trucks off the road in canyons and ditches there.
Always take your time going downhill, usually I never need my brakes downhill, just the jake brake.
37 years driving and I'm still alive.

 

When I was going down Cabbage the first time (and I had many mountains here in the States for the first time) I was slow, very slow. Meanwhile I konow Cabbage and Donner, Vail and all the other famous downhills and I'm much faster, but always slow enough to keep my speed with the jake, touching the brake pedal a few times but never get my brakes hot.
This guy went down the Reef in Utah way too fast:

 

Talking the safest method first. Just like school says. Right gear before you start off the hill. Right gear before you start the climb. But that's not reality, so if you don't feel comfortable with gear changes on hills you have to error on the side of caution and use a gear you know is low enough and just ride it out. Put on your 4-ways, move to the right lane and climb or descend your hill. No shame in that. Next time you'll know that if the gear was too slow last time you can use the next higher gear, and so on. In a heavy truck I've never driven before, or on a hill I'm not sure about, I always start off lower than I know I should need and let traffic come around me. So what if I'm a little slower, I'm safe.

What you said about braking to bring your RPM's down and grabbing a gear works. And sometimes I'll gently brake with my left foot while I throttle with my right and gain that next gear without picking up a lot of speed while in neutral. I don't recommend doing either of these as a new driver though unless you really messed up and came off the hill in too high a gear because then your only choice is to get the truck slower and drop those gears now while your brakes are fresh.

Right now I'm pulling doubles in a mountain state, 129,000 lbs over 10 axles, same route every day over three mountain summits, and I float the gear changes. On the way up I hit the bottom of the hill nice and hard but crest it at 20mph. In a 10 speed right now so I drop a gear when my RPM drops under 14 and the pitch of the motor changes. Even with that kind of weight on you still have time to float the gear changes if you are careful. It is hard to fight the urge to rush into the next gear but that momentum stays with you for a while at those higher speeds so just rev up to 18 and slide into the next lower gear nice and smooth. Rinse and repeat. As your speed drops with the lower gears you have a little less time to make the gear change but it is still doable if you keep it smooth. In the back of your mind remember that if you miss a gear you don't fight it, you go for the next lower gear immediately. You will have even more time to catch that one.

Is it worth the hassle of downshifting while you climb? Yes, if you know you can make the gear changes you can save a little time. But if you fail the gear changes and have to climb the whole hill in low gear you will lose more time than you ever would have saved. My point being that if you don't trust your shifting yet just hit the bottom of the hill in a gear you know will climb it and stick it out. Nothing wrong with that.

Descending is a little different because when things go wrong you don't just stop you go runaway. No shame in just holding a nice low gear the whole way down and letting people pass you. I watch trucks with no engine brakes come off these 6% hills at 10mph. In my case I come off in 7th (on a 10 speed), turn my engine fan on, my engine brake on stage 3 (and its a poor excuse for an engine brake) and let my RPM's build from 15 to 19. At 19 I gently brake back down to 15 and then let them build again. This will get me down three miles of 6% grade with very little braking. If I didn't like the idea of touching my brakes I could drop off in 6th gear and not need the brakes. At this point I have the brakes to stop the truck if I had to and I'm doing 20-25 mph tops. If I made a mistake and started this descent in too high a gear and was using too much brake, or my engine brake failed, I have the brakes right now to slow enough to grab lower gears or just stop the truck. With this weight on I could not just ride this down though. Either I grab the lower gear I need or I bring the truck to a stop right now. Worse thing I could do is just keep gaining speed and using more and more brakes to bring that speed down and heat up those brakes. Hot brakes lose effectiveness and then you have overheated brakes and a runaway.

When the grade begins to ease up to 3% near the bottom I let the RPM's build to 19 again but instead of braking I grab 8th gear. At 19 RPM's again I grab 9th gear. Now at 19 RPM's, engine fan and jake I can hold the 3% grade with that 129,000 lbs in 9th gear at 55mph with a little gentle braking now and then, and at any point during this several mile descent I could stop the truck if I absolutely had to. If I missed the gear change from 7th to 8th then I would immediately go for 9th. That gives me plenty of time to make that gear change. I could also use brakes to hold back anymore build up of speed and get into 9th.

That is how I drive right now. If I wasn't comfortable shifting then I would make the whole trip down in 6th gear and go on with my life.

Long post, hope it helps.

 

Many/most of the "fleet trucks" today won't allow an accelerator push to take the RPM over 1,500 so this needs to be kept in mind ... in these trucks, [say a 10 speed] if your in 10 and at 1,500 RPM, and decide you better get 9th, you're going to have to brake down and shed some RPM's before you attempt this downshift or your going to have problems.

 

What is best way deal with the mountains without a Jake brake

 

Just a little slower ... probably a gear lower then you might could/would go down with an engine brake.

Engine brakes are nice and should be standard equipment on all class 8 trucks but that said, some engine braking systems work spectacularly well, while others barely make an impression, but most fall somewhere in between.