Question for the old timers

One of my Cat's has Jakes and a retarder. The two stroke Detroit's Jakes weren't very strong, much like the mechanical Cat Jakes. Anything extra was a benefit.

 

But they made a lot of noise! Isn't that the real purpose of a Jake?

 

I don't have any problems with trans temp using the retarder, but need to watch the engine oil temp. I am in the habit of turning on the engine fan when using the retarder on longer grades; keeps the engine oil from getting too hot and helps a bit in slowing the truck!

 

Ha, yeah it must be to some, otherwise they wouldn't feel the need to do it in a truckstop parking lot!

 

Sorry @Flat Earth Trucker , we kind of got away from your question.

With practice you could slip the brownie in neutral and the quickly shift the main, but wait too long and you have trouble getting either into gear. When I was learning I had to stop and start over again Many times!

 

There probably should be some clarification of "using" the clutch. Having your foot on it and just barely releasing to help versus a full clutch release made shifting a lot easier to me.

 

Did anybody ever hear "shift that brownie square" and then get in a hurry, round off a corner, and hang it up? I used to carry a special little iron bar to pop the linkage loose whenever that happened. When I was just starting to drive it seemed to happen a lot.

As far as clutch versus no clutch shifting a set of sticks, it was a good idea to be able to do both, depending on the load and the terrain. I was taught that way and it seemed to serve me pretty well. @Oxbow and @okiedokie said it better than I could.

We never had much luck with Detroits so we stayed mostly with Cummins and Cat. Some years back we had a couple of 318s but all they were good for was making noise and pissing off whoever had to drive them.

 

Quite often I was only using the freeplay.

 

Yep! First time it happened to me I ended up taking the top off the brownie to try to fix it. No cell phones to call and ask for advice. After seeing that all that happened was the pin got stuck between the slides, I carried a big screwdriver to pop it free. Definitely learn NOT to round the corners!

 

LOL. I was lucky, the first few times I did it I had a water truck and was way back in the woods. The first empty coming in showed me what to do and let me borrow his bar until I could get my own.
I didn't block the haul road ( a big sin in those days) or roll backwards over a cliff or break anything expensive so I figured I was doing okay.
All our water trucks were X loggers and just when I'd get the pump, the plumbing, and how to shift the darn thing figured out, they'd take it away and send me something else.