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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.