Descending down a mountain

opnspaces wrote:

brulaz wrote:
One more thing, if you're going down a hill with lots of sharp 20mph turns, that can be a lot harder on your brakes than a steeper, but straighter and faster descent like on the Interstates.

And the drum brakes will fade faster on your trailer than the disk brakes on your truck. The trailer brakes will need constant re-adjustment via your controller as they heat up. On the western descent with all the hair-pin turns down the pass in Great Smoky Mountains N.P., I kept increasing the voltage to my trailer brakes as they heated up so the trailer would keep doing its part. I also started manually operating them to give the truck brakes a break. That was all in 2nd gear. All the brakes were stinking hot by the time we got down. Probably should have pulled over to let them cool.

I've never driven a downhill like that with the 20mph turns but I can see how that would heat the brakes up. Were the truck brakes starting to act funny that prompted you to use the trailer brakes alone? Just wondering because it seems that if the trailer brakes will fade faster then the truck it would be a mistake to use them alone to also slow the truck.

Applying the manual switch alone to brake is going to cook your brakes in record time. The manual switch is there for emergencies not for regular breaking.

Trailer brakes get out of adjustment fast enough as it is, you don't want to compound the problem.

We have some for the steepest and winding roads in BC one of them being on our route to the coast. It is also the route that the trucks hauling the ore from the mine use.

I pull into the brake check at the top of the grade, (this is only about 20 miles from home) give the bakes a couple of taps to make sure they are doing what they should, then pull back out on to the highway, 2nd gear from top to bottom and I only need to apply the brakes at the two hairpins. I never get above 30 MPH.