I'm sold on light steady pressure rather than snubbing

6 times?

 

I think I’ll stick with ‘snub’ braking for the simple fact that I d+h a lot of out of spec trailers.

 

Back in the day, we all had 9/16th wrenches next to our seat. First thing we'd do was adjust the brakes on the trailer you were grabbing.

Well... The decent drivers did anyways... Wasn't unusual to get several full turns of you grabbed a trailer a lazy ####### had been dragging around.

 

It makes sense because the real goal is to go slow enough that the engine does most of the braking and then your brakes assist.

The other problem is with snub breaking you're braking harder you're using more friction material your drums are heating up and that is going to cause premature brake and drum wear.

My goal is for my stuff to last me as long as possible. And when it's time for replacement I'm happy to do it.

 

I still have to do that on one of my tractors!

 

I think the argument is that snub braking heats the brakes less in the long run and uses less materiel

 

still do carry a 9/16 and new fangled special tool for adjusting brakes because so many "mechanics" can't properly adjust or service brakes. Had a chassis recently that showed an annual completed 2 months earlier, the brakes were out of adjustment and adjusters were all rusted. Took two hours of grease and penetrating oil to get them to move so we could adjust them and grease them some more.

 

Mechanic for one of the depots has this tool for adjusting automatic slack adjusters, when I bought it and showed it to my boss, he laughed, then he went tried it, he decided it was a cool idea.

Amazon.com: Lang Tools 4651 Automatic Slack Adjuster Release Tool and Wrench, One Size : Tools & Home Improvement

 

Not really, either way you're looking at roughly equivalent energy dissipation (provided the average speed is the same,) and thus fairly equivalent temps and wear. The argument for snubbing was to ensure all the brakes were doing their part of the work.

 

I think that was only half the argument
Snub braking gets the area of the drum that contacts the pad to a higher temp than constant pressure , this is true
But
We have several things working for us now.
One is that the higher the temperature differential between the brake drum and the ambient air temp, the faster the relative cooling
So once you let off the brakes, some of that heat soaks into the steel brake drum but a good portion is also able to dissipate into the air
This cooling phase is the most important part of snub braking.