Stopping any old dodge - even with didc brakes - without power brakes is "press and pray!!" There's a reason getting used front enf sheet metal for '70s DEodges is pretty difficult! (go like stink - stop like
---what do you mean STOP???"')
Try stopping with an old cable brake '49 VW - or a '28 Chevy. (The service brake on the rear of the '28 is an external band. The drum is very thin steel - and the emergency brake is an internal expanding shoe. To stop "fast" you put both feet on the brake pedal and pull the handbrake with both hands. Can't imagine stopping a '27 - which had no front brakes !!!
I have driven VERY aggressively (rally) and never hurt an engine. I have also driven some extreme roads (try down Mt.Tiede, tenerife - to Santiago del Tiefe - a veritable bobsled run. Driving a diesel Astra 6 speed - Deisels do not provide nearly as much engine brking as a petrol engine but is still enough of an advantage to allow a controlled decent without roasting the brakes. Its 3710 meters tall - and the road goes to about 3550 meters. . The decent is about 10 miles as the crow dives -- with about 15-18 miles of road. The drive up from SantaCruz is about 30 miles, for comparison
I had a '50 Olds also. I don't think they came with power brakes. But it did stop okay. They did have the possibility of Back-up lights. I found some at a junk yard and installed them. And they did have the possibility of an automatic headlight dimmer, based on the lights from the on-coming car. I only read about that.
The new or nearly new features of the '50 were a high-compression (8.5 to 1, iirc) production v-8 engine, and an automatic transmission.
This new Citroen has brakes so good, I've knocked the phone once and the laptop twic off the front seat. I'm glad I put a solid state drive in. Even when stopped, I can imagine one could damage a mechanical drive. I think I've gotten used to the brakes and don't do that sort of thing anymore.
Mine certainly had no power brakes. Drums all the way around. No power steering either. 8-cylinder engine which I once got up to 100 mph on the long easy downhill pointing at Huntington (I think) Beach. It felt squirrelly, as I recall, and I backed off immediately. (100 mph in a Corolla is perfectly fine.) The car ultimately developed a lot of problems which I had workarounds for, but I ultimately sold it to a "fine Cherman VW mechanic" who was sure he could fix it. A friend saw it at the local wrecking yard a few weeks later.
My grandma never learned to drive, but she scrubbed the whitewalls until they looked brand new. She also cleaned the chrome with steel wool. You guys remember chrome, right? Back when bumpers didn't need to have their broken plastic covers replaced at $hundreds/each.
I learned to drive stick on a friend's 1938 (maybe) Ford. Looked like a Brit taxicab. Later on I had my own 50 Chevy with an add-on floor stick shift, apparently installed and driven by a chimp. That's the one whose freeze plugs I replaced. Sold that one to a sailor on leave for the $50 I paid for it.
At the very least it's a warning in advance of need to the guy behind you.
So you didn't need to change down. The brakes would have been fine.
But no harm in changing down at the crest if you want to, particularly with a car you aren't familiar with and don't know how likely it is for the brakes to overheat.
I'm pretty sure I've told this before, but what the heck. I got mine up to 110 one time, and it was flat. No help from downhill. It was half-way across Michigan between Detroit and Gary Indiana.
It felt fine but I figure the speedometer went up to 110 so that's all I could do. When I got back to Chicago, my friend Rich Loft, who died of leukemia a few years later when he was in his 20's, said "Did you hide it?" I didn't know about that, but I guess I should have gone beyond the numbers and the needle might have gone behind the faceplate, or if it couldn't do that, I still could have gone higher than the higest number.
I had two r iders, it was just after dawn, no other traffic to hit, but I could have had a blowout and I had no business driving so fast with riders, esppecially when hey were sleeping and couldn't consent.
When I got back to Chicaog, the first thing I did was open my hood to admire the engine, and.... there were bubbles coming out from under one cylinder head. Darn, I thouught, and I quickly shut the hood and didn't open it again for a couple weeks. By then the bubbling had stopped.
Later I got a compression tester and like they say, two adjacent cylinders had low compression. But the car ran fine. And I think it leaked at cranking speed, but when running at 20 to 85 mph, it also leaked but not fast enough to make a difference in how it ran.
I remember now, that even after the bubbles, I drove from Chicago to Allentown Pa. and back at 85mph much of the way.
The car was like a tank, Undeneath the frame was a rectangle with an X inside of it.
One time at work at a construction site, when it was time for lunch, I thought I'd drive over a hill of loose dirt somone had made. I gave it a running start but I didn't get over the hill. The car stopped and when I got out, all 4 wheels were off the gound. so... it wouldn't move. I had to get the guy with the cherry picker to take the car off the hill and put it bak on the ground. But because of that great frame, there was no damage. 1
Mine still worked fine, but my brother had gone to Viet Nam and lent, then gave me his '65 Catalina convertiable. And as much as I like the Olds, I like the Pontiac better. So I gave or sold it for $50 to a guy I'd met because he had a car like mine. He had two, and after he had mine, he had 3. I hated to promote his nerdish hobby (details on request), but it needed a home.
**He bought a Ford LTD? convertibld when he got back from Nam (in one piece).
I wish I had a gramma like that. I remember chrome bumpers. You could sit on them.
I had read how to drive a stick and that was most of what I needed t o know. Then 4 of us were going on a trip and the owner of the 60n? Corvair wanted to leave earlier than 3 of us so he took two of u s out for an hour and taught us to drive a stick. From Chicago to Pittsburgh you only have to shift 4 or 5 cycles up and down, and I did the driving.
We went to Pittsburgh, NYC (where we watchd the '68 Deocratic Convention on TV, then Boston to see Doug's girlfriend, then some small city in NYS where my cousin was being married, the Rochestor and Niagara Falls, back to Pittsburgh and Chicago. There had been a bus and taxi strike in Chicago and I'd volunteered to use my car to drive delegates from the hotels to the Stockyardss and back, and I'm sorry I didn't get to do that, but the trip seemed more important. (The Republicans had the loan of new cars, but the dems were depending on volunteers like me, but more reliable than me.
No, *we* are talking about using engine braking as opposed to using the service brakes. You shouldn't be using the engine to slow down on a hill, that's what the service brakes are for. What you can, and should, do is use engine braking to maintain a steady speed down a steep hill. That is the precise scenario where your service brakes can overheat and that is to be avoided at all costs if brake fade is to be avoided. If needed, should the vehicle still speed up, an occasional application of the service brakes is advised but no more than is required to maintain a steady speed. That way you neither damage your engine or needlessly overheat the service brakes.
You slow down *before* you begin your descent. Once into the descent at an *appropriate speed*, you only use the service brakes to maintain the rate of descent, the engine braking taking care of the rest. It's obvious you have never driven trucks.
Again, that's when you *briefly* apply the service brakes.
Whether you get brake fade depends on your approach to the descent; how you manage your speed, both when entering and during the descent.
Again, you appear never to have driven trucks or, for that matter, any heavy vehicle.
There you go again, face down in the mud, as always.
And we aren't discussing trucks, we are discussing a medium sized SUV.
Or change down initially and don't need the brakes if it is a long steep descent.
But you don't get brake fade with a modern car like that unless it is a long steep descent.
Then you need new glasses bad and that is irrelevant to your silly line about a constant speed. Only a fool like you would maintain a constant speed in a truck or heavy vehicle, at the speed it has to do the worst hairpin bend at and there is no way to know what speed that will be in advance anyway.
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