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Originally Posted by swoody

I hate riding the brakes going downhill/mountain. I had to do this quite a bit on my most recent roadtrip. The only problem is the Jeep I was driving only has 2 and 1 on the gear selector. I figure 2nd gear would be way too low to shift into on 50mph roads. Is this true, or would it be fine? What else could I do to avoid having to ride the brakes the entire time?

You can actually almost redline the engine without damaging it as long as you're not on the throttle.

If you're worried about RPMs, put the transmission in 2 and run the Jeep up to 50, see what your RPMs are.

If you have a 3 speed, you're fine. I use 2nd gear on the highway to slow down.

If you have a 4 speed, you'll be closer to overspeed with 2nd gear, but I'd imagine you'd still be fine. First thing to check is that you can't manually disengage OD. If you can, do it first, before downshifting.