Spardo:
This for our recent Aussie mates. I only drove lorries in Oz in The Territory and WA (on the road anyway, Queensland sugar mill was different), and in the northern part at that.
Don’t remember any really scary hills which was just as well. A B61 Mack with 3 trailers full of cows would have been no fun with no exhaust brake, no retarder and no Jake. 
Were they all invented back in the 60s? And how come Jakes didn’t seem to spread to Europe? Or did they? I do have a faint memory of Cat engined wagons fitted with them.
Are retarders more efficient?
Talking about TKs, TMs and also my first steel cabbed Foden, they all had propshaft handbrakes. What was all that about? Snap a drive shaft and you have nothing left to park it with except for large rocks, as long as it will stay still long enough for you to find someone to fetch one for you. 
Well ! exhaust brakes verses retarder, that’s a can of worms. Here’s fact that I read in a trucks mag ( add for a truck, could have been Kenworth. or something like that ) fitted with the new Jake Brake giving up to 600 hp of breaking efficiency. Sounds pretty good. I’ll have one thanks very much.
Like most folk on here that still driver I really don’t get much of a say as to what I’m driving. about 6 pm the night before the boss’ll phone me and tell me what I’m doing tomorrow and what truck to take. Most of the time I’m in "my own truck " but it’s been so long now I forget what it was. I like to think it as a Western Star with a 650 ■■■■■■■ in it. But in reality it could be a Fuso, Hino, Kenworth, Daf, Volvo, Scania or what ever one of the younger drivers has chickened out of driving because they’re ■■■■ scared of driving an inappropriate truck up to the top of a Tasmania mountain in the dark when it’s raining, only to find he should be up the mountain on the other side of the valley because he’s holding the map upside down.
Exhaust brakes,600 hp of breaking efficiency, not sure if they’re that good but if you get into the low box, low split, you can hold 69 ton log truck from getting away from you, and on loose gravel you can get compression lock up as well.
So I’ve got this new driver with me, he’s sitting in the passenger seat I was driving, and I was hauling out the Puzzle, 45 k’s each way from the mill to the logging coupe. But it’s about 35 k’s on gravel and steep, really steep, hour and 5 to get there empty and the best part of 2 to come back out. The guys nervous and I can see him bracing his knees against the dash in front of him and he’s looking for something to hold on to. Not much in a K1 but he’s doing a pretty good job. Up Little Poatina, It’s so steep that on the approach you have to bend your body forward to look under the sun visor so you can see up the hill, can’t use the diff lock cause it just chews the road up. And that’s just the first climb.
I look across at the new driver who’s got a bad case of white knuckles and even whiter face…We get loaded and are coming back out. First drop and I miss the split, the truck’s off so I slide it on the trailer break, crunch it back into gear and I’ve almost forgotten about the passenger ( poor guy ) 2nd gear exhaust break on #3 but it gets into a compression lock up pretty much straight away. Trailer break on again and we’re a bit side ways in a 69 ton B double looking straight out into fresh air at about 20 degrees to the road which is getting steeper.
Well I couldn’t resist " Oh ■■■■ we’re going to die " Well I though it was funny, I was only having a joke, but I heard the door click and the exhaust note got very high. So I turned my head to see the new driver’s got the door open and is about to jump out. "No, no, it’s alright mate it’s like this all the time.
By the time we got back to the wood yard the driver still hadn’t said a word. He pointed to the weigh bridge and said " just let me out here " Never to be seen again…
Engine Brakes… fitted to mainly American origin engines Cat, ■■■■■■■■ Detroit. I’m sure other folk’ll wade in here and have a full list of other engines that they’er fitted to and some will no doubt say that technically they’re not engine brakes…
Most Australian trucks that go about doing every day trucking stuff have to meet fairly restrictive length measurements and just like most other places in the world so the more load length you get the more money you’ll get. Very few trucks are on cream work so you don’t want to give away to much working weight or load space.
Engine brakes compared to retarders don’t weigh very much. The other thing is that there isn’t much free space between the rear of the gear box and the front drive axle, less than the length of an average fuel tank actually probably, talking about 3 feet on most trucks. I know that in America land they tend to have longer tractor units, The early K1 I had there had enough room to park a Mini between the back of the cab and the front of the trailer when I had the 5th wheel slider sitting fully back.
Engine brakes are an integral part of the engine usually part of the factory spec, and a retarder has to be a special order. So you don’t usually have to pay extra for it.
Engine Brakes are noisy. put it on setting #1 and there’s not much going on. about as good as an exhaust brake on an early series 1 F12
Setting #2… Fantastic ■■■■■■■ noise… if you’re into that sort of thing, even if you’re not it still makes a ■■■■■■■ noise.
Setting #3 read the above, also noisy.
I don’t think the people of the Pennines would be very happy if 1000 trucks a night went over and back using engine brakes, the noise has a reverberating bass that travels for miles…
Your not allowed to use them in built up areas at night… "Avoid using engine brakes " that’s what the signs say
There’s not many trucks fitted with retarders in Australia some of the ridged Scanias have them but the resale value is low as not many people know how to fix them if they go wrong, so buyers tend to stay clear of them. There wouldn’t be many diesel mechanics in Australia that haven’t come across a Jake/ engine brake and would know how to fix it if it went wrong… Retarders …ooooooooh ■■?
Jeff…
. Nurse! Robert
because it’s a shot of climbing the northbound side after you pass the farm on the left in the bottom. Cheers Dennis 
