Hills are the rollercoasters of the driving world, but instead of an overworked motor in an amusement park, you are the one driving the ride.

Hill driving has a way of keeping us modest, whether you’re gliding down a hill while hoping your brakes don’t give out or squeezing your way up one that feels like Mount Everest.

But don’t worry, this is a guide to mastering the ups and downs (literally) of driving, not a story about scorched clutches and overheated brakes. Are you prepared to embrace your inner mountain climber? Instead of making those gears work harder, let’s make them work smarter.

Gear Selection

What to do when you go up and down hills? You need lower gears. If you’re in, say, third gear and your car starts struggling, go down to second gear. If it’s still struggling, go down to first. Every time you go down a gear, your car is going to have more power to get up that hill.

If you’re still struggling and you’re in first, you can’t go any lower—that’s the lowest gear you can have.

In that situation, you want to try and maintain some momentum, maintain some speed, and keep the revs slightly higher because the higher the revs are, the more power you have.

So, the lower your gears, the more power you have, and the higher your revs, the more power you have. Keeping your gears low and your revs high will enable you to have more pulling power to get up that hill.

When you’re going down the hill, braking is the issue. You don’t want to overheat your brakes, so you want to try and use the engine to keep you slow. The same is true going uphill as going downhill: lower gears are better.

So, if you’re in third gear and you’re having to use a lot of brake a lot of the time down this hill, you’re going to overheat those brakes. Go to second gear and bring the clutch up to engage second gear.

It’s important to bring the clutch up and engage it—don’t leave the clutch down because then you’ll have even more problems. Hopefully, second gear will mean now that you don’t need to press the brake as hard.

If you feel you’re still having to use the brake constantly and quite hard, then go down to first gear and bring the clutch up.

Now, you want to go slow because first gear can’t go fast anyway, and going slow will prevent your brakes from overheating. Your wheels have to be spinning quite quickly for your brakes to overheat.

So, in the worst situations, you want to be in first gear and very light on the brake, keeping the car slow.

The reason why lower gears help you downhill is that they give you more engine braking. A lower gear has more engine braking than a higher gear, and that saves your brakes from doing all the braking for you. You share it between the brakes and the engine.

Having the clutch down is the worst thing you can do because then you get no engine braking, and you’re solely relying on your brakes, which will overheat them quite quickly, particularly on a very long steep hill.

Uphill Driving

When I’m going up a 25% gradient, I’m putting my foot quite hard on the gas at the moment in second gear. It is going—it’s handling it. It’s not a problem, but I’m having to press the gas a lot harder than usual to maintain the modest speed.

Going uphill, the hill’s on your side if you need to slow down—it’s easier to slow down. But it’s not on your side when it comes to accelerating. This bit’s a bit flatter, so I can get going and go back up to third on this bit.

I think I’m going to have to go down to second. At the moment, the car is slowing down; I’m pressing the gas harder, and it’s still slowing down. My foot’s really hard on the floor. Now it’s time to go down a gear into second—foot on the floor—there we go. It’s starting to pull up the hill.

So, I don’t need first; second is handling this just fine. Actually, there’s wheelspin again—crikey, that really is steep. And that’s the problem with lower gears. It is easier to wheelspin in lower gears because they do give you more power. But you need that power to get up the hill.

If you don’t have enough grip to get up the hill, then you really are in trouble. Then you need different tires or a different car for that terrain you’re trying to drive on.

When I am in a 20% gradient—so it’s not as bad as the other one, not 25%, but still really steep…

Downhill Driving

When I’m going down a 20% gradient in second gear, I’m having to use the brake still. I come off the brake, and it still speeds up in second gear. I don’t want to use too much brake.

So, if I’m having to use the brake a lot, I’ll go down into even lower gears. If I go to first gear now and bring the clutch up, I’m actually off the brake now, and it’s only speeding up a little bit. It’s got up to about 19 miles an hour, and that’s keeping me slow.

That’s really good because I don’t want to have to stay on the brake. It’s starting to slow down a little bit now, so I’ll go back up to second because lower gears will give you more braking. Then it’s speeding up again. I can use a little bit of brake, but the key is to try and get the engine and the gears to keep you slow.

You don’t want to be hard on the brake all the way down this hill because you will overheat your brakes eventually. Again, in an automatic, it’s more or less the same thing: choose a low gear—a gear that means you don’t need to use much brake. If you’re having to use a lot of brake, go down another gear.

On the older style of automatics, the torque converter ones and the older ones which have an “L” on them, “L” will help you on the hills.

Important Details

When you’re going slow, your wheels aren’t spinning as fast, so your brakes are going to take a longer time to overheat. Once your brakes get to about 200 to 250 degrees Celsius, you’re going to know about it. You’re going to really struggle to brake, and you can start getting juddering through the brakes as well as the brake pads start to transfer onto the disc.

It’s a bit more of a technical term there, but believe me—when your brakes get hot, all sorts of horrible things can happen.

If your brake fluid boils—and yes, your brake fluid can boil—you’ll get a spongy pedal. My brake fluid is actually three years old now, and I recommend changing brake fluid every three years.

My brake fluid is due, so I don’t want to overheat it. If it boils, it’ll get spongy. The younger the brake fluid, the hotter it needs to be before it boils.

When I’m off the brake in first and it’s really speeding up—even in first gear—I’m just letting the gear keep me slow with a little bit of brake. I’m doing about 20 miles an hour, and that’ll keep my brakes cool enough so that I don’t lose them.

To Summarize

When you’re going uphill, if the car starts struggling, go down a gear. If it’s still struggling, go down another gear. Keep going down gears until it’s not struggling. Keeping the revs higher will give you more power and help you up that hill. If it can’t go up the hill, then you’re in trouble.

When you’re going downhill, again, the same thing applies: lower gears are better. If you’re using the brake a lot, go down a gear so that you can use less brake. If you’re still having to use the brake quite a lot, go down another gear and keep going down gears until you can use less brake.

If you’re in the lowest gear possible and you’re still having to use the brake a lot, then stay slow because staying slow will stop your brakes from overheating and prevent your brake fluid from boiling.

Replace your brake fluid every three years because brake fluid gets water in it, and when it gets water in it, it has a lower boiling point. When it boils, you get a spongy pedal. If you replace it every three years, that should keep the boiling point nice and high to avoid that spongy pedal. Also, make sure you’ve had the air bled out of the system as well.

The same thing applies to automatics. If you’ve got a more modern automatic where you can change gears yourself, choose those lower gears. If you’ve got an older traditional style of automatic, the letter “L” is very important on hills.

Or, if you’ve got those numbers, those numbers basically mean the automatic gearbox won’t allow it to choose a gear higher than that number. So, if it’s “2,” it’ll stay in two or below. If it’s “1,” it will stay in gear one.