Motorhome brake upgrade
I have a 40' 2002 Beaver Santiam. I have never been entirely pleased with its braking capability. We are about to travel to the 5 National Parks in Utah and I was wondering if anyone has any suggestio...
Forum Discussion
Kluckraft wrote:
Thanks. I do have an exhaust brake which helps a lot, and I have hade the pads and air recently checked. The problem I have is on long, steep descents the brakes get very hot (smoking hot), and begin to fade. This is with the exhaust brake on and in low gear.
Ken
I'll assume you have a Cat 3126 and a 6spd Allison. I find it hard to believe you were in 1st gear or even 2nd. When you turn on the exhaust brake what number comes up in the Allison shift pad? If it's only 4 then you can have it reprogrammed to have it go all the way down to 2. You can also manually down shift it below 4... rpm needs to be below 1900 before you manually make it shift to a lower gear. Brake hard to get it to 1900, manually select one lower gear and then get off the brakes. If in this lower gear your rpm's get above 2400 and the end is not in sight then you have to get on the brakes hard and repeat the above selecting an even lower gear. Usually you need to come down in the same gear that it took to go up. The Allison key pad should tell you which gear you are in.
My 98 Beaver Patriot had air over hydraulic disk brakes and I never felt they were as good as the air drum brakes I was used to, BUT I never had any problems coming down long grades out west as the exhaust brake and a low enough gear made where I rarely had to use the service brakes.
