Baja

Well, I'm obviously way out of my league here. You guys are far more educate and "tuned in" to your rigs and all things diesel. I have a long ways to go, heck I'm just remembering it's 'i' before 'e' when spelling it out. Seriously, this is good stuff and I find these post helpful. War Eagle your comments support what I've been hearing from others. Which leads be to believe for my specific situation, a premium brake, little better understanding on the use of tow/haul and low gearing is in order. So what brand of brake did you choose, any comment on the debate over drilled vs dimpled rotors?

John you are correct it is stock tranny, although I don't know the model (relatively new to the truck and diesel in general). The Banks product talks about a "Smart Lock", does this address converter lock issue you're talking about? Also, under general, road conditions I don't appear to have any problems in stopping or slowing. As you say the road geometry is such I can maintain enough speed so air flow keeps the rotors cool. The problem is when I have to basically hold the rig to 10-20mph for many minutes at a time because conditions would rattle us to bits or I have a 16' wide road with a series of 180d corners to deal with. If I'm following some of the product descriptions correctly, at those speeds an exhaust brake might not even kick in without some manual override. Great reply guys thanks.

My search of the site may have missed this topic, so if it's elsewhere, please point me in that direction. My situation is this. I have an 04 Ram 2500 4x4, 5.9 auto tranny with 170k on it. From what I can tell it's a stock truck, no extra tuning, or significant upgrades. I use it to carry around my pop-up, slide-in camper, which when loaded, is probably at 1800#. I'm pretty religious on keeping the "wear" items" (brakes, fluids, alignment . . . ) maintained. My issue is; twice now I've had the brakes over heat on steep grades. Once was while in the back country of BC (logging roads) the most recent, in the mountains of Baja (San Pedro Martir). In both cases the roads were fair macadam or seal coat surface, winding, narrow, long 15+m and steep, + 8% in parts. In both cases I've had newish brakes heavy duty brakes yet these would overheat to the point of smoking and require, as the brits would say, tea stop, to let them cool off. In the last case I ended up put the system into 4-low first gear and let he engine & tranny crawl us out of the mountains. This worked but I have a sense this isn't he best option. That brings me to this forum and post. Do I get more bang for the dollar installing an exhaust brake system (pacbrake seems to be a preferred choice) or going with an upgraded friction system like EBC or SSCB? For the latter, I'm thinking slotted rotors (larger if possible) pads and calipers. In either case I'd the installation would need to be done by a shop. I don't have the skill, time or tools for this type if work. Thanks in advance for any input.