Downshifting or braking

[Bonnie McDowell]

From the owner's manual for the 2001 E450:

When descending long, steep downhill grades, always use a lower gear to
provide engine braking to save wear on brakes. Use Drive (Overdrive
OFF) on moderately steep hills, Second (2) on steep hills, and First (1)
on very steep hills.

This was under the towing section, but were I to do 3 mile hill my tendency would be to use second gear. It is both steep and curvy. In the old days, when car transmissions only had 3 gears, I always used second. Otherwise you are continually braking on the way down.

[Bonnie McDowell]

Bonnie - By vibrate do you mean the pedal pulsates some? I so you probably have a warped rotor or a rotor has over heated. Either way it needs to be taken care of.

Rotors usually warp because of heat, maybe a pad hanging up, excessive riding of the brakes, or cheap rotors.

Some of the china stuff one market warps easily.

If the vibrate is something else everyone probably needs a better description

*******
I don't really think I felt it in the pedal at all, a little more like a washboard road sort of feel up front - not huge, but noticeable.

Sigh, another trip back to the garage. Although up to now it hasn't really been to fix anything (except for the visit to replace the gasket under the AC to fix a leak and replace the Fantastic Fan arm after it wouldn't open on the first trip and we sort of warped it by trying to help it along Fantastic Fan was great and sent all the replacement parts necessary for just the cost of shipping. But then, sticking covers apparently were a problem in the ones around that time.

I can also have them check the generator, which seems to run just a little rough on the second road trip (although it seemed good when I ran it here the other day for its regular "exercise").

[lafons]

We took a trip in our 2001 a couple years ago across the Blueridge parkway and used the transmission for braking often.. I had always done this with Out any problem,BUT the next day on I-81 we were broke down with transmission trouble. Turned out we had a broken overdrive gear on the end shaft. No way to know but I believe all the downshifting led to the problem. I installed a jasper rebuild built fo rv's. FYI for about $4000.