Driveline retarders

[Ultra RV Products]

We are carrying driveline retarders for gas motorhomes.They are a frictionless magnet system & the one for the Workhorse is 622 ft lbs of braking!My queation is how interested will gas rail owners be in something like this?

[Ultra RV Products]

We are carrying driveline retarders for gas motorhomes.They are a frictionless magnet system & the one for the Workhorse is 622 ft lbs of braking!My queation is how interested will gas rail owners be in something like this?

[rvcrazy]

Depending on the cost and the effectiveness, I think there should be much interest. Down shifting my W22 Workhorse Chassis motorhome can get trying when a small amount of drag would work just fine.

[Ultra RV Products]

The cost is 4500 for the parts plus labor.This has a four stage manual lever with every stage increasing braking & the one we tested worked very well.In fact I think it works better than a Diesel with an exhaust brake!

[M&EM]

Mike how much weight does it add to the chassis?

[Ultra RV Products]

Marty,

The unit weighs 295 lbs. & it takes the place of the carrier bearing.

[M&EM]

Wow, sounds like a lot of twist being applied to the chassis rails between engine and retarder. How is the excess heat dissipated from the eddy current magnets

[Ultra RV Products]

Well as far as the heat, I suppose the wind under the coach at 55 MPH would take care of that.For the torque on the drive line,your not stopping it,just retarding it.We Installed one on Henderson's line up's show truck,it weighs 24000 with a van behind it & coming down the grapevine,I could put the retarder in position three & never have to touch the foot brake.

To me that's more impressive than a diesel exhaust brake,especially when you cant put one on a Gas engine.

[DriVer]

What you need to do is to recover the energy absorbed by the retarder and run it through an energy recovery system and dump it into a set of batteries.

Stage 1 of a motorhome Hybrid system. You can also recover energy from the brakes as well.

Take that recovered energy and direct it to an electric motor. Stranger things have been seen and already fielded from current crop of automotive designers.

Next up Hybrid - over-the-road commercial passenger motor coach. I'm sure we will see a Hybrid motorhome at some point.

We might see a 20 MPG or better motorhome in our lifetime. Cost ???

[Gary RVRoamer]

The retarder sounds fantastic but $4500 plus labor would price it out of my range. I'd save the money and put it towards a trade-in.

But I do miss the exhaust brake I had on my diesel truck before we switched over to gas motorhomes. When I go down long hills in a lower gear, the Allison 1000 gets HOT enough to smell the fluid, even after leveling out at the bottom of the hill. A restared would probably eliminate that.

[DriVer]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by RV Roamer:
When I go down long hills in a lower gear, the Allison 1000 gets HOT enough to smell the fluid, even after leveling out at the bottom of the hill. A retarder would probably eliminate that. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>Transynd would help alleviate that to the point where it wouldn't be too much of a problem.

[eandy]

If you're polling yea and nay, price is too much for me too. That's a lot of brake pads.

[Oemtech]

Hummm... that's about $15 a pound plus install.

Lets see now:
$2500 for all the perf upgrades
$4500 for the brake retarder
$6000 for the Air Suspension
$1600 for Trac bars and shocks
$???? for the SSC option
etc
Nope I will trade for DP first and it probably won't be an "R" chassis either.

[Clay L]

I would love to have one and $4500 may well be a fair price, but unfortunately it's too much for my budget.