Engine breaking

[SunnyFL]

I have a 2019 Ram Classic 4x4. I have been asking about engine breaking at the dealer and their answer is evasive and confusing.

Here is my question: In winter I spend a lot of time above 8000 feet. Every day I drive up a US highway to about 11,000 feet and back down. The local DOT usually does a good job of leaving a bit of hard pack snow on the road. On the way down if I had a standard transmission I would have it in a low gear and let the engine slowly break me on the way down instead of gently riding the break. The last thing I want to do is jab the break from time to time or overheat the brakes.

Can I put the auto transmission in a low gear and do engine breaking on this trucK? On my last truck (a Tundra) it was absolutely not recommended to use engine braking. Does anyone have a definitive answer on this?

 

[Ohio5pt7]

I use my engine brake all the time currently in SC came thru the mountains using nothing but the engine brake. The 5.7 was in everything up to the 3500. Its perfectly fine and up for the task. My truck has seen 10k plus miles pulling our 7500lb loaded tt this way no issues.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G891A using Tapatalk all grammar errors brought you by fat fingers and auto correct.

 

[SunnyFL]

What gear do you use? Do you up and down shift as required? Do you down shift if the truck starts moving faster than you want to go? Or do you start out in a low gear and never change up and down?

One of the confusing things is the dealer said that some of the trucks (I think the 2500s) have a special device and controller to do something like trailer brake or something. Again they are very confusing and evasive. I don't thing they know.

 

[Ohio5pt7]

Honestly if you set your cruise the truck will use the engine to brake its self. Otherwise I'll manually shift it. You can also blip the throttle to get it to down shift and immediately hit the brake for a sec and it will hold that lower gear

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G891A using Tapatalk all grammar errors brought you by fat fingers and auto correct.