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Originally Posted by vid6639  Chris, wow that was a lot of info.
There is one point I would like to point out. As you said most of the modern cars have very powerful brakes, in which case engine braking is negligible.
But in India there are quite a few cars which don't. We have cars with all round drums and no brake boosters.
I had a car which was very popular here called the Maruti/Suzuki 800 which was difficult to stop without downshifting during any sort of braking even normal braking if you put your foot on clutch or if you left it in gear. You had to downshift if you wanted to stop. |
Very interesting - I'd considered that your cars may be different but I'm a little surprised to hear about 4-corner drums. I would expect that the cars there are very light, too (800-1200cc engines sound common), so the brakes may not be as comparatively bad as you think, just that they require more effort. The lack of a brake booster is probably a bigger part of the problem (and race cars don't have 'em either
).
There are some 10-20 ton public transportation buses here that have front drums. Drum brakes shed heat poorly and are of generally cheap construction, but shouldn't be
so bad at single-stop braking if they are sized properly. Most big trucks use drums.
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Originally Posted by vid6639 If you brake and the vehicle is in neutral you dont have full control of your car. In india any sort of hard braking may very well lead to your car getting rear ended as vehicles tailgate. In those situations it may be necessary to hit the brakes glance in the mirror and judge your braking so that you stop as close to the vehicle in front as possible. You may need to accelerate after hitting the brake to prevent a rear end collision.
US road conditions are ideal and for the track what you say is true. In india the roads are like the track and we need to put the power down asap just to avoid these situations. |
While I've never driven in India, my co-worker was there recently and told me a little about it. US driving conditions (roads, drivers) are far from ideal, but it sounds as though it is more congested there.
Was that in-favor of gradual braking to sudden braking? If so, no arguments there, but a panic stop is a panic stop, and engine braking probably doesn't help much in that circumstance.
Let me give an example from where I live... There is a highway near my house that leads into the city. The speed limit is about 55mph (~100kph) and I'm usually going a little bit faster than that. On this highway there is a hill just under 1mi (1.6km) long with an elevation decrease of about 300ft (~100m). Starting at the top of the hill, I pop the car into neutral and coast down. Over this distance and despite the steep hill, the car will lose speed due to tire, bearing, and air friction with no help from engine braking. If I were to just lift off the throttle it would be going very slowly indeed by the bottom of the hill. Coasting in this case probably saves a little bit of fuel and gives the engine a brief rest without harming anything.
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Originally Posted by vid6639 PS: the info provided by you and Clint in this short span of time is invaluable for many.
Cheers |
Thanks very much. We've been doing the car thing for a while now, and are no strangers to enthusiast forums. Always a pleasure to share whatever experience we do have.
