28,500 lbs Ford vs Ram 1 ton DRW
VIDEO $80,115 MSRP Ram 3500 385hp/930tq, 4.10 rear, 5690# payload as configured, 11 brake applications on the way down. 2.7 mpg and 11 min 41 sec on the uphill portion. $83,015 MSRP Ford F350...
Forum Discussion
Cummins12V98 wrote:Me Again wrote:
Let experienced drivers manual select the gears both going up and back down. Then you will learn a lot more about each truck. Number of brake applications down hills should be greatly reduced.
Agreed! I can tell you my last RAM 11 HO Dually towing a combined 29K with 3.42's I could manually drop a gear at times and get it to gain some speed while on a grade. The AISIN knows exactly where to be as I have tried dropping a gear on grade and it did not make one bit of difference in speed.
Only thing I may do is if I know I will be dropping a gear on grade is to do it just before my speed starts to drop. I mostly tow with cruise on up and down grades and on the flats.
When descending I choose the gear I would have came up the grade in. I set cruise for the speed I want to descend but most of the time I am set to a few mph slower than I want to maintain. I rarely touch my service brakes even when double towing at 35K combined.
Bottom line you can make these trucks perform best with a little help from the educated driver!!!
I'm not certain but I kind of think the Ford applies the brakes when using cruise and going down hill. Hopefully I'm wrong and it is just the exhaust brake that is applied. The reason I think it is the wheel brakes is that at night I can see the glow of the brake lights in the side mirror come on when I go down a steep hill on cruise. I've never noticed that when manually using the exhaust brake.
