Braking or upshifting question

[Miss_Athanatos]

When driving down a highway with a lot of deep hills, how high do you let your engine rev up on the downhill side? What do you do to manage RPMs: upshift or brake?

-- Nicole

 

[Grigg3]

Both.
Well, actually down shift (choose a lower gear) which increases engine RPM for same road speed.
Then use brakes to keep the RPM under say 4,000 or lower if you like, perhaps brake to keep it under 3,000 rpm if not so steep a hill.

 

[turbobrick240]

^ Same here. I generally select a gear that keeps rpm below 3500 or so.

 

[Miss_Athanatos]

How high of RPMs do you go before you shift up when you're really trying to take off?

 

[Grigg3]

About 3,000, or I suppose 3,500 if you really wanted to leave someone behind.

Otherwise I upshift at the lowest RPM that when in the next gear is still a useable RPM without lugging the engine, just little enough throttle to move along gently.
So what RPM to upshift depends on lots of things, on a hill or not, still accelerating or not, how quickly accelerating and so on.

 

[740GLE]

Depends if you're still accelerating down hill or want to maintain speed. Usually modulate with the brake and try and not let the RPMs get above 3K.

The 2012 Passat DSG is the worse, it will down shift and let the engine screem at 3,500+ if you keep a light foot on the brake going down hill.

 

[TurnOne]

I'll let mine rev to 4k and use brakes to keep it under that when going downhill.
4K being pushed my the car isn't the same loading as 4k full throttle accelerating. Typically 3500 is more common than 4k for me. We have hills but not mountains around here.

The oil should still be circulating and it should all be safe. One of the many reasons I love manual transmissions.

 

[jason_]

I drag the brakes.

They're cheaper and easier to replace.

Sent from my One using Tapatalk