If you have a load on your truck it will take a lot more distance to come to a complete stop, no tailgating.
Check your shoes and drums, brakes are inexpensive to replace especially if you do your own wrenching. My latest toy is getting new drums and shoes before it goes back to work in the spring.
I'm not able to give all the details of this story, but will give the most important parts.
B.C. is very mountainous, some of the back roads are switchbacks with very steep grades. The truck was a large International diesel with a crane, loaded with some of the largest electric motors you would care to lay your eyes upon. The legal load limit was 14,400 kgs and I was well over that.
Now that were loaded it's time to make the accent, the road is narrow with grades sometimes more than 13 percent and nothing but one long switchback with very few straight stretches and very very rough. Here's were it gets interesting, I'm trying to only apply light pressure to the air brakes but I'm bouncing so much in the seat I was not able to keep steady pressure. Next thing you know we have a fully loaded runaway.
No matter how much brake pedal you applied it was not going to help, and my thoughts were OMG what if someone is coming up, If that did happen we were going to push that other guy right over the bank or down to the highway. Like a bug on the front bumper.
Lost all air pressure the best I could do, was to completely take my foot off the brake, disengage the clutch and pin the throttle to max out the RPM's to build up air then stand on the brake for a few seconds then repeat the procedure.
We made it off the mountain in one piece, when I finally did get the truck stopped chalked the tires leaving the parking brake off so that the brake shoes were not making any contact with the brake drums which were at melting temperature. I've never seen drums white with heat before.
My woman never said a peep or even gave a scream, she sat quite as a church mouse through the whole ordeal.
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