What Is Engine Braking? What Is A Jake Brake?

When you’re driving around on the streets, you might have heard cars revving up their engines and using that power to stop themselves. It’s most notable when a big truck does it with the use of what’s called a “Jake Brake” which essentially uses the power of the engine to slow down the truck instead of speeding it up. Basically, the process is used to eliminate wear and tear on your brakes. By using momentum to slow you down instead of friction, you could save yourself money in the process and not have to go through changing out your brake pads as often as you would with using just the brake pedal.

How does it all work and how much money can you really save by doing this? Well, I’m no engineer but thankfully, Engineering Explained is here to give us the entire rundown on exactly how this process technically works out and what using it could do for you in the long run. Just when you thought that it did nothing more than sound cool to offer along with giving you a smoother stop, along comes all the real information to teach you exactly what it’s all about.

The Engineering Explained host always has such a way with words as to really make you understand concepts in common terms. If you just follow along with videos like this, who knows, you could be an expert in no time! For now, we will take baby steps and explain one concept that a time so after watching this instructional video on how to do engine braking and what exactly the benefits are, be sure to tell us what you think of the process and if you have anything to add to this mound of information that surrounds this simple braking process.