Down hill shifting

Reduce speed if possible with foot brake, then downshift as normal.
You'll be under more stress doing so, as you'll feel the speed increase when you're out of gear, so relax.

I'm gonna guess you got yourself in a situation of too high a gear and too fast - and rode the brakes down the hill?

 

They used to call them - "Dragonflies! Drag up one side & fly like hell down the other!!" hahahaha

wd40 - YES as a driver WE ARE supposed to know that it is a huge hill (called a mountain) & shift "before" we go down! It is possible to shift after depending on HOW steep it is, the total weight of your truck, AND the experience/ability of the driver to handle it "without" riding your brakes & burning them (or running over other patrons of the road)!

 

Others are more qualified to answer your question better than me, But if you are going to downshift on the downhill side of a mountain you might want to watch this video for recovering lost gears.
I thought this video made things pretty simple and clear.
http://youtu.be/Ko0jSLtwuro

 

Not a good idea as a rookie. If you miss the gear you have nothing holding you back. You'd rather have ti high a gear holding you a little then no gear holding you. Best thing is untill you know the truck, the weights and the grade go a gear or 2 lower then you think. You can go to slow as many times as you want, but can only go to fast once.

IMO if you have to ask, you prob dont have the experience yet to safely shift on a downgrade and probably shouldn't.

I dont mean to sound condescending although that may be how it comes across on a forum, but shifting on a downgrade can be flat our dangerous if you mess it up. If you absolutely are going to though.....slow down more then you would normally for a downshift since the truck will speed back up quicker then normal. Practice on small hills that if you screw up its no big deal.

 

sometimes you may have to brake & raise the r.p.m's at the same time to get in lower gear.

 

An experienced driver can make a downshift fairly safely, on a downgrade, if he has somehow screwed up and found himself in too high a gear for the grade.
However, if a newbie tries it, there's a much greater chance the newbie will miss the downshift, end up in neutral, panic and more speed will set in, and create a worse/disastrous problem. I wouldn't recommend a newbie try it.

Try to avoid that by putting more concentration into selecting the proper downgrade gear before you descend the grade. Better a gear too low, than too high.

But IF you're ever caught in that situ, do a few stab braking to get down to a much slower safe speed, before even attempting to downshift. You'll also have to make the shift much faster, to compensate for the increasing road speed on a downhill.

[QUOTE="Hang - Man";3765652]Others are more qualified to answer your question better than me, But if you are going to downshift on the downhill side of a mountain you might want to watch this video for recovering lost gears.
I thought this video made things pretty simple and clear.
http://youtu.be/Ko0jSLtwuro[/QUOTE]

Hang - Man,, this is a great video, but the driver makes a serious mistake on the part where he's demonstrating missed gears from not pre-selecting (flipping) the range selector.
He shows flipping the range selector, while in neutral (during his missed shift demonstrations). You should never flip your range selector while in neutral, as it will end up destroying your sliding clutch assembly in your trans (big $$$ repair).

 

Use the foot brake, slow down under the speed for the gear you want to shift to. Grab neutral, rev, shift to lower gear. Depending on the grade and weight of the equipment you may need to slow 10 mph under the speed for the gear. If you are in a 10 speed, you can shift down to 7th right from 10th. Slow down until speed is 20 mph, (yes it is going to lug like hell), pull it out of gear, rev to 1300, shift to 7th.

 

10-4 KW Cajun, Thanks for pointing that out. I didn't study the video closely and probably wouldn't have picked up on that myself --good watching out.
I did however like the video for the good video angles showing both the hand work and foot work clearly --and figured if wd40 is going to start practicing his down shifting on a grade he/she had better learn how to recover gears --before he/she ends up in one of those other videos.
Probably should find a video showing down shifting control.

 

FYI: WD40 --this is what can happen if not in the right gear or any gear going down hill -its been posted many times before but maybe you didn't catch it.
When your out of gears and you already smoked your brakes -- http://youtu.be/1Vl9SLzzw_w