exhaust brakes

Hi Alison, I had experience with a big hire campervan in Tassie a while ago with exhaust brakes. Loved 'em. I hope to fit them to my Supatroopa. Whenever you lift your foot off the excellerator they kick in. You turn them off or on, so can use them when easing down a hill and not put strain on your hydrolic brakes. I don't think that they would be a great advantage to towing though. Good electric brake on the cvan would do the main job. You can operate them manually so that the trailer slows you and pulls you straight if need be. If you just touch your foot on the brake pedal the whole rig brakes. The exhaust brakes however would not be linked to the cvan, so it would be pushing as your troopie decelerates. This could lead to fish tailing in the wrong situation. I would be very interested in other forum particpants' ideas on this. Cheers Royce

Generally it would be a NO NO, a towing vehicle fitted with exhaust brakes (or any other brakes for that matter) should not be used to slow down a caravan. ie.. If you were going down hill using exhaust brake to slow the rig down, van is trying to push car along, if big side wind comes along/road train passes your asking to be jacknifed......especially on unevan roads and if van not loaded/set up correctly..

I agree with Roycein that electric brakes are the way to go for the caravan, the gain can also be set so that the van brakes ahead of the car, ie set it so that if you just very lightly touch the brake pedal braking can start just slightly before/harder than vehcile brakes, and this can help especially if you need a little braking on the caravan but not on the car so much, in certain circumstances it maybe that you have foot slightly on brakes but accellerator still depressed, as it maybe too difficult to manually take hands off steering wheel to use manual overide..

my .02c worth...

Alison, I think they would be a great idea if not to expensive. Trucks use them all the time as aux. braking and they're always pulling big loads. They'd probably help with brake pad wear as well. On a hill in the right gear and the exhaust brakes on I don't think you'd have any trouble keeping the whole thing straight. Just my thoughts hope it helps Greg.