Down hill jake braking, what speed and gear do you use?

45 to 50 mph
gear to maintain engine rpm at 1850

 

Some signs say trucks must use low gear but don't really understand what that really means, their understanding is provided I change down a couple of gears, that means I'm in low gear, however low gear means a gear that will hold your truck down a steep incline without the use of the truck brakes, which would be about 3 rd gear, the idea behind this is to prevent the driver from cooking the brakes if that happens you'll have no brakes and be unable to control your vehicle. If however its not such a steep incline as 6 % is not that bad and the engine retarder will hold your truck back then It'd be fine I guess the other question still remains though what if your retarder, engine brake failed what then? which leads us back to putting the truck in a gear that will hold it without any other source.

 

Disclaimer; All depends on weather / traffic of course.

For me it’s 55mph, 16th gear and 3rd stage on Jake..if I’m slowing down too much I go to 2nd stage then back to 3rd.

Most important is to watch your rpm”s..that is key to not destroying your engine.

 

That's completely dependent on your truck, gear ratio, and engine. What you should be shooting for is to not have to use your brakes, or to have to use them very little. Choose the gear that holds you back to a constant or near constant speed with the jake on. As long as it's a safe speed for the road and you aren't speeding or running over anybody then that's it.

 

Drop another gear. You can go down too slow any time, but maybe go down to fast once.
Your not driving the family car.

 

Question from a light-class operator.

If you side on safety, and start in a gear lower than actually needed, is it an issue to go up a gear, or does that present an issue of possibly missing the proper gear and causing chaos?

 

Never be faster at the top than ya wanna be at the bottom!