Are Brakes Part of the Engine?

[Scott Woodhouse]

:huh:

ETCG,

I have a 2000 GMC Yukon 1500 XL 4WD that I tow with. Over 5k lbs. My trailer has brakes, but I am looking to up the stopping power. GM’s brakes are not a bad thing, I get 80k miles out of them. However, I want this to have greater stopping power. There are allot of aftermarket brake kits, slotted, drilled.I don’t want to spend 3k, but was wondering if you had any experience with good brands for the money.

Thanks

Topic

[dave]

You might want to think about installing an engine brake. You can save $$$ by installing it yourself:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDl9bttYSJE

[Scott Woodhouse]

Hi,

Never thought of that….but this is a Yukon/Suburban and I wish it was diesel. Can you do that on this combination?

Guess not, just watched the video 😛

Maybe I should put the diesel in so I can stop, lol. I luv Diesel.

[gary]

When you need to come to a stop I nstead of istalling that just put your transmissin in a lower gear. Like if you have an auto just push your lever below drive. It will speed your engine up and makes it want to slow down and keep doin tnat till your in low gear that is what truck drivers do in town because engie brakes are too loud

[Lorenzo]

i lol’d at topic title

[Flemming Jacobsen]

[quote=”thegarytrucker” post=57488]what truck drivers do in town because engie brakes are too loud[/quote]

Yes and No. Even regular passenger cars can do engine braking, otherwise known as compression braking. The difference between engine braking in a regular car versus a trucker employed a Jacobs Brake aka Jake Brake, is that in the regular car the compression “pressure” doesn’t get vented out into the air but basically the engine works like a massive pump that acts as a brake.

Where as the Jake Brake, vents the pressure out into the air, thus creating the massive noise that is often frowned upon. BUT at the same time that procedure makes the engine braking a lot more effective, and thus works wonders to at least slowing truckers down considerately.

In Europe where I live, we are not really that big on Jake Brakes and install install retarders in our trucks which more or less has the same effect as the jake brake, but without all the noise. And these days the retarders are so “clever” that they actually work as a generator while the truck/car is being slowing etc.

If you really want to look into this then KERS is a nice keyword. Kinetic Energy Recovery System, which is basically a piece of the driveline that accumulates “force” as the car is slowing/braking, but feeds that power back to the driveline as you hit the accelerator coming off the line. And basically giving your car a nice free boost up to speed.

[Author]

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