Jake brake etiquette

My ex mother in law you to tell me that all the time. The world doesn't revolve around me.
Is that you Rachel?
Further evidence that the world revolves around me. For me today is Friday.

 

Well.. that we did. Let's see... if I can recall... Big Savage was 7% for 5 miles to Cumberland. Easing a 1972 Transtar Cabover with it's Roadranger 10 on a Cummins 280? No jake in sight. In those days you went down in the gear you came up on over the top. But for me I was more conservative and started off the top in a gear lower and no brakes let her drift.

Once the drifting kicked in and engine is close to 2300 (You can kick it to 3000 in mack 350's but the bearings must hold or you don't have a engine) you took another gear. If your speed increased you had two choices. Brake it down and take the next gear down and repeat while your brakes cooled. Or.... sit on the brake with 15 pounds pressure (There was a gauge for that purpose in those days) so that you held the speed hopefully right where your thermal build up on the brakes are matched by the cooling. If not? You fade as your inner wheels turned to glass. Either the trolley for the trailer which was very common or all the brakes in both tractor and trailer. There was a third brake for the tractor only in those days but you don't touch that. It will dynamite you.

In snow, the trolley was used to stretch her. Ice? Well... let's just say that the winter ice is a cooling agent to the brakes thankfully.

First sign of smoke seeing blue haze or smelling it, you got off your brakes no matter your situation and on the radio for everyone downgrade of you. Then get in the hammer lane and consign your life to God. If you are lucky you have a mile or less to run her out at the bottom. But don't you stop until the haze, smoke stops pouring from your brakes. Ive been there many times. The last time I did was almost my last ride on Monogelia Ridge in West Virginia east of Morgantown area. There is 5 passes to cross there and I think that one was the third with two to go westbound when I started pouring smoke and the pads went away in my tractor right side first then the rest in the trailer.

I got out of that one by not stopping, I rolled towards Kentucky at 25 to 35 mph rolling smoke for two hours until it finally quit. Stopped in Hurricane 76 (TA) to add up the damage. If you stopped, you risked a fire. THose little fire bottles under your seat will put out one pad, maybe two but if you have more than three you have a truck fire if the fire department did not arrive in time.

Now a poster talked about the 80's The culture then was much different than today, better if you asked me. Your elders taught you everywhere what's what. And any time someone talked trash ignoring the entire assembly of people at the counter they got taken to the back row and beaten. No police report here. Your scars and pain is a lesson as well. I should know. My tire thumper has a couple on there.

In those days you had 10 days to get to the west coast 300 miles or more was a good day in some of those trucks that have no air ride in sight. (Diamond Rio, Marion, Auto Car etc whoo... awesome) Ive would give something to drive them again for a hour. But I don't think that is to be.

Today?

They built too many developments and subdivisions. Take Toronto Canada as a example after NAFTA kicked in and everything inside America went over north to establish factories to build cars and such at 35% in Canada's exchange rate favor. A entire section east of the main Barrie (I think it's Barrie to the north of Toronto) was field. I spent 5 years watching roughly 30 miles of the entire area east of and up against the free way get paved over and then built with homes 30 feet apart. Same with Phoenix Arizona where a whole desert got covered with townhouses all the way in from the distant mountain ridge to the north and east of Mesa.

You are not going to get a good night's sleep like that. It's the way it is.

 

Ive been told you only look cool when jakes are on at 3am in the truck stop. Guess i was told wrong

 

The one reason for a jake inside a truckstop or any place really, would be the jake is on to kick the engine down fast to take another gear. It wont go the normal blatblatblat it would just snort.

Some Jakes are set up that way where with the right transmission those trucks will just walk away from everyone else kicking those RPMs down between gears to grab.

Really other than that there is no reason to jake inside a stop. I never noticed really, if you remember low gears with slow engine at torque or lower your jake wont make that much noise anyhow.

 

I used to live in a place that backed on to the highway. Being woken up by jakes at 2am didn't bother me. Now when one of those rice burners with the fart can woke me up I was super ######!

 

Exactly. Heck i still go down hill at a speed appropriate for a truck with no jake. Little baby wires tell your jake when to work. Heading down a big grade with 50k lbs on is not the time i want to give Murphy a chance to strike.

 

Same thing I do in that stretch by the dam, put excess wear on my engine and my brake pads & drums.

 

Dont tug on supermans cape, dont spit into the wind, and dont mess around with jim