Winter Mountain Driving Advice Needed

You should give some examples of how using 10 drive tire or engine brake is better then using all 18 tires for more traction is better. If you don’t explain, then we can’t learn from you ?

 

I vaguely recall a story from a friend of mine that hauls cattle.

As I recall, it involved cresting a hill and all of a sudden the road got quiet and the steering felt really light. I don't think it was snow as much as freezing conditions on bare pavement, but my recollection is fuzzy. What I do remember distinctly is that the friend had the instinct learned from millions of miles of driving, to know that it was incredibly slick, and to do as little as possible in regard to steering or braking.

He didn't wreck!

 

It has been explained ad nauseam.

You obviously didn't read my post.

Here is a sentence from it:
"Nobody every said or implied that using 10 tires will provide more traction than 18."

 

That’s not a 100 percent accurate he did wreck his drawers or so I was told

 

I did read your post. Besides getting the most traction possible going downhill, what other things are you worried about or something you are trying to fix.


I’m giving you the opportunity to explain what more important or what other things are more important.

 

Here's the point you keep missing, which I've explained before.

Safe winter driving is about reading the road, knowing where the traction limit is. The entire point of using fewer tires is so that you find out about traction levels and changes sooner. Especially going downgrade, where gravity can quickly accelerate the truck to a unrecoverable speed. We're forcing a slip sooner so that IF it happens, we're much further from the top of the traction curve than if we'd found it with all the tires. We KNOW we have some traction by shifting the breaking out to the rest of the wheels, and not hoping we can find more traction on some other part of the road surface.


An example, just happened to me Monday night. Up Loveland Pass, barefoot, and not a single slip, not even in the nasty hairpin. A gear lower than normal because of the extra drag if the couple inches of snow, but right to the top. Same dropping to the ski area, 5 mph slower to keep the rpm down, and slower around the hairpins, but zero slips.

Where the grade steepens above the runaway ramp? No visible change to the road, but I heard the warble of the slightest rpm variation, followed almost immediately by the chugging of the rpm started bouncing around a couple hundred rpm as grip went away and the ecm pulled the Jake on and off. Simple matter to slow down, drop the Jake a stage, and find the lower speed to safely continue. That ended up being 15 mph on stage one and the brakes instead of mid 20's on the Jake and engine fan. That's a major drop in energy dissipation needs at the tires, BTW.

But here's the critical thing, what you're missing. If I had been only on the brakes, it's quite likely that change in traction would have gone unnoticed until I needed to apply the slightest increase in pressure for a corner or slightly steeper section. That puts one in the situation of being on the edge of traction and still needing more, and unexpectedly. And frankly that hunt for traction is nerve wracking enough on flat ground, without gravity trying to tug you right over the edge of the traction peak.

Would we rather come down a slick hill without sliding a tire? Of course! But I would much rather slide one or two tires and know that I have traction to recover, then to come down solely on the brakes and not know that I'm at the traction limit until it's too late.

 

How differentials work is poorly understood. As long as all the tires are turning the same speed all eight tires are getting equal power. It's only once the wheel speeds start to differ, that power goes to the least traction corner.

 

For the record, I’ve never once stated the engine brake is “better”. But it’s a useful tool. I simply don’t agree with the mantra of no engine brake in the snow ever.

 

Sounds like we agree the differentials send the power to all the drive tires.

but if one set of drive tires hits a spot with less traction then the other drive tires and loses traction. Now all the engines brake power will be transferred to the tires that lost traction and basically nothing is going to the other 3 sets of drive tires, right ?

That’s what you want to avoid because now you will have get the drive tires traction back to mach the speed of the other drive tires. It could be as simple as turning off the engine brake, maybe apply a little power. This is a problem you have to solve because you can’t or don’t want to keep going with drive tires all not spinning at the same speed. Because it’s unlikely the tractor will keep going straight all the way downhill to the bottom

 

Now that you’ve typed all that out do you understand what @Hammer166 has said to you multiple times? It’s better to have a dual slip and correct yourself for the conditions than find out the same thing when you’re on the brakes. He typed a whole response to you and you ignored it because you don’t even entertain the thought of skinning a cat any other way than the way you were trained.