Jake brake installation question

[LPChristensen]

I have a question for all you guys that have installed a Jake brake on your 03's. I recently purchased a Jake brake and I was talking to a guy I know that teaches diesel mechanics at a local community college about who he might suggest in the area that might install the brake correctly without running me into the poor house. He suggested that if time in the shop was not an important issue with me, that I might let one of the diesel classes at the community college install it. Apparently, they are looking for work on diesel trucks, large and small, as teaching support, and this would assist future diesel mechanics. Now my question is this, is this something that you would consider, knowing the complexity of installation for the brake? The prices is right if I want to go this route, free, but I am a little reluctant to hand over a project like this if it is a complicated job. Please give me some advice!

 

[CIverson]

I don't know about having the class do it, but from reading the install of the pacbrake in the last issue of TDR it dosen't look overly challenging.



Also, since it's a class I'd bet they would let you "supervise" the install if they want the work bad enough.

 

[SRadke]

As far as I know the only real diffrence between the Jake and Pacbrake is that Jake mounts a belt drive vacuum pump on the motor and Pac uses an electric air compressor. That being said I did the Pacbrake install on my truck in under 3 hours having never seen one before. It was very straight forward. Honestly I don't know how a common sense type person could go wrong. Let the class give it a try. Like CIverson said you could probably even stand in and watch.

-Scott