Using the engine brake will not wear out your engine. The pistons are going up and down, the valves are opening and closing regardless of wether you are using an engine brake or not.
Looking at it another way an engine that is operating at say 400 HP will only have maybe 300 HP of braking power using an engine brake. So when braking there is actually less force being exerted on the engine components than there is when it's being put under a full load in normal operation.
You can also look at it still another way. When you downshift the trasmission in a vehicle you are actually doing the same basic thing a true engine brake does. By that I mean your turning the engine into a large air compressor. In the case of downshifting the engine is being sped up due to the gearing and as a result is sucking in more air than it typically would at the same speed in any other situations. By taking your foot off the throttle the engine is doing nothing but compressing air and getting nothing in return because of the lack of fuel. With an engine brake it does the same thing by making the engine compress air without any power in return. The difference in what's happening, basically, is the Jake opens the exhaust valve and allows the setup to brake more efficiently than it would otherwise.
Ultimately the engine isn't gonna experience any more wear by using the Jake than it is not using it. The biggest thing you face with it is the tendancy for guys to shift down too far and overspeed the engine, and that's what's going to cause the damage. On the other hand the service brakes are going to wear every time you use them and every time you can use the engine brake instead your extending their life......But that's just the way I understand things based on both driving a truck with a Jake as well as having installed and worked on other trucks with them......
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Today's Featured Article - Tractor Traction - by Chris Pratt. Our first bout with traction problems came when cultivatin with our Massey-Harris Pony. Up till then, this tractor had been running a corn grinder and pulling a trailer. It had new unfilled rear tires and no wheel weights. The garden was already sprouting when we hooked up the mid-mount shovel cultivators to the Pony. The seed bed was soft enough that the rear end would spin and slowly work its way to the downhill side of the gardens slight incline. From this, we learned our lesson sinc
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