Jake brake question why? Deere sellers post

Some of this results from Deere sellers truck crash post. I don't get this permanent use of jake brake all the time everywhere??? I drove in an era where a lot of trucks did not have one. I used them in bad conditions on heavy loads (not moving around in a parking lot) or empty truck on flat roads!! One young fellow told me "it saves on the brake shoes" well I have seen some engine/drivetrain damage from them as well. (CAN POST THAT DIBALACLE LATER) Also its like they can not drive anything with out it. So I know we have a bunch of truckers on here. I just don't get it And yes I can see why the general public hates them, the noise

I never could get used to reaching up and using that darned thing. My brother uses it all the time,but my instinct is to just step on the pedal.

RR glad your back on. Don't get me wrong it has its place. I really don't like them on ice either, that story is for later!!!

Mine is switched on and never off unless very icy. My truck has 2.5 million on it and no engine work. I replace brakes and drums almost never. Jake brake slows me down exactly the right speed and no need to brake. People in general that use brakes come to the corners to fast and if it happens to be icy can be in trouble. I never have that issue as I slow for corners well in advance. I guess it is how you get used to driving. As far as noise, it never bothers me and not sure why it would anyone else. If you have a muffler on it and not straight pipes I don?t see the issue

Believe me they are loud and its who can be the loudest seems like that is all its about. rumor has it some towns are going to crack down on them for noise.

I live right on top of a hill going in to a curve a mile from town. These guys hauling potatoes to Dayton head out and go by here about 4:30 in the morning and hit those things right square in front of the house. About enough to raise me right out of bed.

Towns here say not to use them. Noise bylaw can only be in forced after 9:00pm till 7:00am. I can hardly here mine in the truck with window open. My brother has strait pipe and I got his ticket once as someone omplained about noise. I got a no log book ticket but he pulled me over because of noise complaints. If the forced them to keep the factory mufflers on it wouldn?t be that noisy.

A local village here (Fonda NY) has a ban on use of Jakes. It is on a heavily used truck route that is in the middle of town. There is a long decent into the valley where N-S traffic ties in with I90 There are several distribution centers, (food and dry goods) in the area which account for a lot of the truck traffic.
The ban is enforced by NYSPD
Loren.

The Jacobs Engine Brake was designed and developed to be used on steep, downhill grades, like on I80 going through the Rockies. The Jake brake is your only hope because the brakes will just go away when they get HOT. There is absolutely NO reason to use a Jake brake on flat ground or even gentle slopes The only reason the cowboy drivers use it is because they think it sounds cool.

Hey, look at me, I'm driving an 18 wheeler and it has a Jake.

Jake brakes have their place.
One place I used to use one a lot was in the mountains when you were trying to grab a different gear the JB would knock the rpms down very quickly so you could get the gear and not lose too much momentum. For flat land use I think it's a bit silly but I also think putting dual exhaust or lift kits on your pickup, dropping V8s in Ford Ns, and a lot of the stuff pullers do to gain an extra erg or two on the track is silly too. To each his own I guess.

I look at it as safety equipment and keep it on most of the time. In an emergency it could make the difference between life and death. Irritating perhaps but not much if used responsibly and better than a truck on top of your car. New trucks with exhaust filters quiet the exhaust so much that no one can tell if it is on or not anyway.

The only ones that make a lot of noise are the ones who Rin straight pipes. Those should be outlawed as far as I'm concerned. But I used mine all the time and no one knew it because it went through the factory muffler. They save a lot on brakes and are well worth using

Agreed!!! Our jakes don?t make hardly any noise. Use them in town all the time. Jakes are kinda necessary if you live areas that have long hills, mountain grades, or river bottoms like were I?m at in MT.

Yes Jon I probably should have worded it better These are strait pipes and can be herd miles away.

long hills, mountain grades yes that I have no issue with.

Sir you should have wrote the post for me as that is exactly how it is or was.

There's a lot more pressure being applied to the engine parts and drivetrain during accelleration than when using the Jake Brake. Using the compression of the engine as a brake produces high pressure but nothing like what the combustion of the fuel causes!! Just Saying.

I think you need to pick your battles. Your gripe isn't really with jakes, it's with loud pipes.

25 years of running a 3406 with the Jake on high most all the time and never a complaint. Even when riding past police in a no jake zone.

It's one of the best safety features ever put on trucks and in PA they can't prohibit them on any slope over a certain %.

Without the straight pipes I don't thing they are annoyingly loud.

Those who complain about jakes probably never spent much time in a big truck, and have certainly NEVER paid for a complete brake job on all the axles. Why are strait pipes with jakes so offensive, but a Harley with straights, or loud hopped up pickup or car considered cool??? Its all perception, how to want to look at it. It would not be installed on a flatland truck if it was not of some benefit. I have bought, and paid off trucks running to the west coast each week from the Midwest and never did a brake job on the tractor. I did not get this kind of life from these units using the foot pedal. AL

When they were logging behind our farm for 3 winters. Every day jake brakes started at 4 am all with big chrome straight pipes. This is level ground on a straightaway with clear visibility
for a mile each way with 0 traffic.

5 am or so and every 15 mins after the first loads coming out would come down the hill to the highway with the jake brake on. Would have loved to find out where they lived and fired up
a straight pipe tractor outside their window at 2 am every day.

Myself i have run Jake brakes on trucks since 1970 and found them to be vary useful. BUT i was never BILLY BIG RIGGER that had to show off and be loud with straight pipes . I grew up in a small speck on the map that was a speed trap over load trap and had a muffler ordnance . My first car WAS NOT the one i wanted even though i paid for it i wanted the 58 Ford but my MOM insisted that i got the 56 Ford Rag top and mom and dad were the ones signing for it . My Mom knew the org. owner and yes it was a little old lady school teacher , the down side of this was that the 56 had Hollywood mufflers and 292 t/bird special .You could hear that Ford coming on a quiet night just driving 55 three miles out of town . Now my dad was a Buckeye Bear just up till i bought that car before he took a new better job. Dad even told me that it was a little loud so go easy . Well the night turn cop of Podock Juntion for what ever reason had it in for me , why i have no idea as i never went over the speed limit in town and drove easy , up at the end of my street lived the chief he did not have a problem with my car 9 doors north of me lived the cop that worked the 3-11 shift Bob did not have a problem with me or my car BUT harry did . I worked for a vary loarge construction company that had it's main office and main shop and yard on the west side of town . On the weekends i would drive down to my old home town and run around with my old friends and the house rules were on the weekends i had best be walking thru the door at mid night not 24 hundred hours and 30 seconds . and the vary first weekend i came home Harry stopped me and gave me a written warning and i was late coming thru the door . Dad was NOT happy and the next morning he and walked up to the Chief's house and we had a talk Chief asked if i was speeding and being loud coming into town , i was not he came down and listen to the car and said as long as i did not race the engine i was fine by him . Well the Chief had a talk with Harry that even made matters worse and he would lay in wait on friday and satrurday nights and the game of cops and robbers was on as i had options as how to get to the house and i started coming home from all four sides of that town and try and make the drive and get the car parked shut down and lay across the seat till Harry went away as he would drive by the house shinning the spot light on the car with each pass. This game went on for a year till i found the 61 and traded the 56 . That one was a six cylinder three on the tree ----- for four days , till i dropped the 352 dual quad in it with vary quiet mufflers and even when i pulled tyhe 352 out and dropped in the hand built 390 tri power i ran MUFFLERS . Then on into my early trucking days i took great efforts to be quiet as then the last thing in needed was a cop to look up and get nosey . when one is hauling heavy one does not need to draw attention to ones self . Or goal was to haul heavy run fast and look light , and the onset of us usen the jake brakes on the roads we ran on was a huge brake saver and time saver as now you could drive down a hill loaded under complete control and still have cool brakes to stop with . When you had loads on over 120000lbs and the oold engines did a far better job on hold back , The old double breasted Yamhaws had the best hold back going down the hills then the Cummins , then the cat's and the macks sorta did a little hold back and made some noise . then into the hauling of the big heavy and ugly loads of heavy haul , some loads were not that heavy by my standards but they were over just the same , One hual i did over two years was haqul new tire pressses from where they were built to Wilson N/C . They were only 68000 and change 11 foot 11 inches and three quarters wide and 14 4 inches tall on the trailer . For the most part the trip was pretty much the same till ya got to N/C then god only knew what way they wanted ya to run. With a turned up Cat 550 set to 740 it flattened out the humps and bumps and i could run the hills on I 77 just as fast as i wanted , descending down fancy gap with out touching the brakes was just a matter of dropping down to seventh over or 10th how evr you want to call it on a 13 speed and set back and let her ride and drop off at 65 MPH and hold it t hat , if i needed to drop a little more i would turn on the fan and drop another five , yep going from the automatic setting on the engine fan to manual would put that much more drag on and engine . Back in 1980 i got twenty years of my life scared out of me going across the P a . Pike one night with m y 77 4300 I H eagle , that was a FAST truck and would plum eat anything on the road , even more pony power then the 550 cat turned up had . I had a load on for Philly and like always i was heavy . I was running about 80 east bound coming into the one tunnel that had a sharp curve to the left once you came out of the tunnel , knew it was there as this was not my first time across the Pa. pike , as i was getting to the end of the tunnel and lifted my foot off the go pedal and expecting the jake to come on and start bringing me down to the 65 MPH to make the curve as it came on a bright blue white flash under the dash lit up the floor and NO JAKE BRAKE and down the the brake pedal i went hard and out of the tunnel i came standing on the brakes and looking at that mountain , how i made the turn i have no idea But i did know i was in trouble as i already had smoke coming off all the brakes and there was still a lot of curves and mountain to go down with a run away . Thank god everybody back then used there C B's as they got out of the way while i rode it down to the bottom keeping it up on all 18 . Once i got her whoaed i found that the FUse blew . Fixed that problem and readjusted the brakes cleaned my shorts and went on and even on my lest go fast truck i ran a muffler and only one five inch pipe . My 77 was a sharp truck but i always called it a little truck because big trucks have dual pipes and are loud . If one took the time to read where as most don't read or can't read wright on the drivers door piller it state on rivited metal or stick on tag that removal of the noise control divese or emissions is forbidden by federal law . Once again no one pays attention to laws. Same as the guys with the Harley's they have to be loud . Between all the old heavy equipment i ran as a kid all the gun fire incoming mourtor rounds artillery and being with in a mile and a half of B52 strikes my hearing is toast and i myself do not like LOUD.

like what the tractor vet said I ran my jake all the time with mufflers never wanted anyone to pay att to me as 120,000 was a half a wheel barrow load, hauled heavy every load I would haul all over the state of ohio in the late 70's early 80's. been cought and fined but still made way more money than haulin 80.000

I made the comment about this over there. It is something I just cannot rationalize with, the excess usage of the engine brake, in flat areas + the large straight pipes etc. Jerry mentioned something about using them when shifting and I recall some trucks with certain arrangements of motor and trans., it makes sense, knocks the RPM's down a little, helps to shift. I recall Mack 5 or 6 spd (which ever you want to call it) and doing this. I never really liked that transmission, the spread is too far between gears. So many tandem dumps were like that.

In this stretch of road, a trucker that lays in on the engine brake in the wee hours of the morning is truly hated. There's a hamlet north of here with signs banning the use and for good reason.

You had to be a real truck driver back in the day, and know how to handle the truck you drove with the load on, an engine brake for certain was a nice thing to have with a heavy load on a down grade, but not 100% necessary if you knew how to drive and all the brakes were in good order.

Heck I lost a range in a 13 speed with a D8K with ripper on a 60 ton lowbed on Rt 78 headed to Rt 287 in NJ in '93, headed downhill. The air gauge was going down quickly and I had to figure out how to deal with it, with a 90,000 lb monkey on my back. That D8K was delivered to Foley Cat in Piscataway safely and is where the repair was made to the '72 heavy spec Autocar I was driving and I took out a new D8N afterward. Had I panicked, that rig and me would have been in some sort of crash. No engine brake. Just the transmission and brakes. I figured out that I could stop the trans air leak, and used those gears to get safely to their yard.

What's so hard to rationalize?

Engine brake = $FREE
Service brakes = $$$

In an industry where every dollar counts especially if you're the owner-operator, it only makes sense.

Funny how so many places have ordinances against using jake brakes because of the noise, but none of them enforce the noise or muffler laws.
Is it because they don't want to write up their friends with those obnoxiously loud straight piped Harley's. I hate those things!!
Here in Ky it is illegal to run a big truck with out mufflers, I got a ticket in Tn for not having mufflers on the truck I was driving, owner payed the fine and put mufflers on.

I ran muffles on all the semi's I owned, didn't want to listen to loud pipes for hours on end, plus didn't want the attention.
Can't stand loud pipes on diesel pickups, rice burner cars or crotch rockets ether.
Don't get me wrong, I ran aftermarket muffles on my performance street cars but not obnoxiously loud, something that had a nice performance sound that didn't irritate the police.

There's a slight 3/4 mile long down grade into a local town, due to the noise from straight piped trucks the town passed a jake brake ordnance.
Police officers there are friends, told me the ordnance was 99% unenforceable, they could only right tickets to ones they actually see and hear use their jake brakes.
I told them the muffler law was easy to enforce, if it sounded load pull it over, if it didn't have mufflers write them a ticket.
Once the word got about tickets for no muffles the jake brake noise problem would go away.

The Jake break ain't the problem. Its the idiots with straight pipes using it that's the problem. Ought to be the same law for anyone running straight pipes - shoot on sight!

I ran over the road for 32 yrs 28 as an owner operator. Never could understand running without mufflers the only thing you got was deaf!!! also don't understand running the jake all the time even on flat land. I live next to the interstate and lately it seems the strait pipes are all the rage.

(quoted from post at 14:04:46 02/25/19) I ran over the road for 32 yrs 28 as an owner operator. Never could understand running without mufflers the only thing you got was deaf!!! also don't understand running the jake all the time even on flat land. I live next to the interstate and lately it seems the strait pipes are all the rage.

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I agree, hate the noise from the too-loud exhausts. Same goes for the Harleys and their straight pipes that supposedly "Save lives." I live about a half mile from a straight section of I-70, hear the engine brakes screaming through the loud pipes a half-mile away. I don't like loud noises in general, have taken to wearing ear plugs when I drive. The Japanese rocket bikes that scream past at 150 mph, the big trucks with their aggressive exhausts, the little cars they call "tuners" that produce lots of noise but little speed. Well, I have built-in mufflers for all of them.

What is almost comical about this is that the feds have a law going into effect this year requiring some kind of noise generator on electric cars to make it possible for pedestrians, etc. to be able to hear the vehicle coming. For safety.

What type of engine do you have with 2.5 million miles,no engine work?

M-Man ..... am I reading this right? So if a guy has straight pipes on his vehicle, he gets shot? Like with a gun, or maybe a slingshot or paper wad?

ran truck and trailer fuel tanker for 5 years all mountains 600 cat with retarder and Jake love them both would hardly use the brakes even on 6% grade but it had mufflers

Yes Billy you and I feel the same way on this.

It's the gearheads with straight pipes that showoff that are jerks using them at the wrong times I have had calves dam near go through a fence one time because of their straight pipes

465 volvo. friend down the road has 425 volvo with just shy of 3

2.5 million miles and no engine work??? I would also like to know more about that engine.

I don't have a problem either way. I have run all over this country and done it both ways with and without a jake. When hauling oversize I just slowed down for things as there is more to watch when maneuvering.
Personally I wished I had had the brake saver put on the last truck I bought those Cats just don't slow down much with a jake on it. Those brake savers work very well for holding you back on a hill. I always kept mufflers on the trucks.
I replaced the first set of shoes on the truck at 700,000 and the replacements are still on there at 1,150,000. Trailer brakes didn't last as long for me. The axles on the trailer seemed to have more weight on them with that spread axle .

I have been around class 8 trucks all my life. I have never seen an engine go that many miles with no engine work! And your friend has one with 3 million miles and no engine work. WOW that's amazing!!! What model Volvo engine is it???

The point is "Excessive Use" and that is what is hard to understand, why every other truck that passes by here and so many other places similar, and the driver uses all 3 stages, (yes I have heard the stories about using all stages or none, partial is not good for the engine...) for no good reason. I can hear them 1/2 mile as they pass or approach. Try to sleep in the summer with a window open and one with 6" straight pipes comes by, rattling you out of bed.

There are times you absolutely need and should use the engine brake, and other times you should not, these idiots don't know the difference and are the same ones you see looking down at their phone while driving a tractor trailer. I see it daily, they ought to have their license revoked for driving distracted. The caliber of professional drivers out there today lacks common sense.


We owned 2 rigs at one time, ran the east coast, + straight trucks, certainly know what maintenance and repairs cost, even more so with a careless driver that has bad driving habits.

At work, we just replaced a new clutch that an idiot driver tore up, you cannot believe what this jerk did, and he cut someone off with the tandem boom truck, almost killed the woman, totaled the car and tore off the ICC bar on the back, she hit perpendicular, I have the photos. 2016 heavy spec truck that we need daily to make our deliveries, he cost me all kinds of down time on the job with union ironworkers, + my time to deal with it. I don't need to hear about the costly mistakes or the cost to operate trucks, been around it most of my life.

Ive been driving trucks for dam near all my life. Lots of trucks without. But I will say it does help on the braking a lot. They dont have to be loud to be effective. I haul heavy equipment now with a Freightliner that has a Jake Brake and you can hardly hear it. The loud ones do sound pretty cool but Im over all that now.

Cat brake didnt work as good as the cummins Jake Brake . Had the 400 cat in a LTL 9000 Ford great truck but the jake brake wasnt as strong
as the cummins