Lost My Brakes !!!

[sreigle]

Don, good luck and let us know what you find. Any time something like this comes up it catches my attention. I'd like to learn as much as I can so to avoid a similar situation. That really could have been disastrous. I'm glad you were able to get things under control and avoid a disaster.

[Wordsmith]

Thank goodness you are all okay! Like others said, this has always been one of my fears and what kept me out of the larger Georgia mountains with my F-150. When I was just a kid, the brakes started to go out as my father was pulling our camper down a mountain in North Carolina, and I vividly remember the fear in his voice when he first said he thought the brakes were going…

As an aside, though I only have a fraction of Steve’s experience towing with the 2005 Ford 6.0 PSD with the torqshift transmission, I can add that when I came down some grades yesterday from Helen, Georgia, that transmission in the F-250 really did the trick. Just like Steve said, it took over and I did not even have to touch the brakes. It truly has caught my attention!

[sreigle]

If you want it to downshift more quickly you can step on the brakes for a second or two and it will do so. Our shortcut to our park here in Gatlinburg is such that I turn on tow/haul on that road even though the Montana is not behind us. As we round one curve there's a very steep downgrade so I step on the brake to downshift before starting down the grade. Just being cautious. Anyhow, I find tow/haul useful for grade braking in these mountains in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park area even when not towing.

[Trailer Trash 2]

Well I'll be useing 2nd and 1st gear when I go down a grade that long in the future, I happened to be in 3rd and out of overerdrive, it was a a major learning experance for me and in the wallet too, won't ever happen again.

[BillyRay]

my brake controller quit on our way back from Myrtle Beach last year. I had truck brakes, but the controller quit so I had no trailer brakes. I paniced at first, but after several phone calls and trying to fix it with no luck ....we made the decision to come home without them. being on the highway and having the tow haul mode on the chevy, we didn't even notice. it wasn't until we left the highway and went to secondary roads that we even noticed! that tow haul mode is a great thing. now I realize how much it actually saves on your brakes ....even when the do work!

[Bob Pasternak]

As I said on another thread here,"You can go down a lot of hills too slow; You'll only go down one too fast".