Easy Mountain Driving
When I lived full-time in Florida, I rarely thought about mountain driving. For the one trip out west or through the Smoky Mountains, it was trivial to simply take off the cruise control and turn on the tow/haul mode on my gasser and later, the Jake Brake on my DP.
But now that we are full-time traveling, it seems as if we are very often in the mountains or high plateaus and constantly working the brakes and throttle was a little tiresome. I would inevitably pick up too much speed going downhill and end up applying the service brakes too often.
So I decided to look into the features of my cruise control and jake brake and found that with very little effort, I could setup the cruise to automatically apply the Jake Brakes in stages to finely control the speed.
Now, I set the cruise control slightly below the speed limit and relax while the Cummins ISX15 maintains my speed within 6 miles per hour while I concentrate on the road ahead. I set the system to allow it to go 6 MPH over my set speed so that it would allow the coach to pick up speed on a descent to use on the way back up a mountain.
It makes mountain driving much more enjoyable and safer for me. I often wonder why the manufacturers don't set this up in advance and why more folks don't set it up after the fact when it's fast, easy and free on all recent Cummins engines.
But now that we are full-time traveling, it seems as if we are very often in the mountains or high plateaus and constantly working the brakes and throttle was a little tiresome. I would inevitably pick up too much speed going downhill and end up applying the service brakes too often.
So I decided to look into the features of my cruise control and jake brake and found that with very little effort, I could setup the cruise to automatically apply the Jake Brakes in stages to finely control the speed.
Now, I set the cruise control slightly below the speed limit and relax while the Cummins ISX15 maintains my speed within 6 miles per hour while I concentrate on the road ahead. I set the system to allow it to go 6 MPH over my set speed so that it would allow the coach to pick up speed on a descent to use on the way back up a mountain.
It makes mountain driving much more enjoyable and safer for me. I often wonder why the manufacturers don't set this up in advance and why more folks don't set it up after the fact when it's fast, easy and free on all recent Cummins engines.
