on 4/26/06 10:26 AM, Kim Brennan at kimbrennan@MAC.COM wrote:

> Essential the philosophy promoted in the John Muir book "How to Keep
> your Volkswagen Alive". Think of brakes negatively. Use them sparingly.
>
> My father is an adherent of that philosophy. He'd often get 100K
> miles out of his brakes before they needed to be worked on. Mechanics
> never could understand how he did it. A manual transmission
> automobile can use the engine for slowing down much more effectively
> than an automatic can.
>
 But using your engine as a braking mechanism wears your engine out faster,
so I would imagine that replacing your brake pads is a lot less expensive
than replacing your engine?

It seems to me that the older generation, myself & Muir included, was taught
to down shift & keep the revs up, in part to save the brakes, but that is
not good advice in today's world w/ self adjusting brakes, disk brakes, ABS,
very expensive/complicated engines, etc?

Tom-remember when  it was cool to double clutch & heal & toe the gas & brake
pedals?