Weak brakes & battery box confusion.

[nyone]

Yeah I am aware of making a living getting in the way of doing things, well past that now. Sleeping not so much but eating, usually on the run, for sure.

I remember you saying the brakes on your other trailer were still working, so the truck is out of the picture. I agree the most likely problem with the break-away in the electronics of the battery box.

At least you have crimp connectors, all the connections on my trailer when it was bought were vampire splices like these.View attachment 809028


IMHO they should outlaw those things, the way I see it manufacturers use them for cheap fast connections that will work long enough to get the trailers off the lot.

I cut 21 of those things out of a trailer I use to own..I then had no problems in the next 12yrs I owned it.

 

[Snobdds]

One thing I suggested earlier was jacking the trailer up and having someone step on the brake pedal to see if the brakes work. I remembered I did this in the past and it doesn’t really work because a lot of brake controllers sense momentum and if the trucks not moving. As I recall when I did this the brakes did work but I could spin the wheel by hand easily. Maybe try it on gravel and have someone watch.

Yes, they sense momentum, a function of load.

The best way is to get the trailer rolling on gravel and manually engage the break controller in the truck. The trailer breaks should lock up and be dragging the truck to a stop.

That is why just putting an amp meter on the breaks dosen't work, it needs to be moving, with a load, to get max amp's getting to the rear breaks.

It's a ground issue...

 

[BleedingOrange]

Ya cheap connectors... If there's enough wire cut them out and use better connectors....

I,ve completely re-wired many trailers over the years, and never use those useless connectors. I might use one to repair some wiring that got damaged on a trip, but it would only be a very temporary connection. I solder all the splices and connections, and use water tight heat shrink tubing to keep moisture out.

 

[Dftodd]

Yeah I am aware of making a living getting in the way of doing things, well past that now. Sleeping not so much but eating, usually on the run, for sure.

I remember you saying the brakes on your other trailer were still working, so the truck is out of the picture. I agree the most likely problem with the break-away in the electronics of the battery box.

At least you have crimp connectors, all the connections on my trailer when it was bought were vampire splices like these.View attachment 809028


IMHO they should outlaw those things, the way I see it manufacturers use them for cheap fast connections that will work long enough to get the trailers off the lot.

I totally agree. My trailer came with those. First thing I did when I got home was replace all of them with shrink wrapped butt splices.

 

[Dftodd]

I,ve completely re-wired many trailers over the years, and never use those useless connectors. I might use one to repair some wiring that got damaged on a trip, but it would only be a very temporary connection. I solder all the splices and connections, and use water tight heat shrink tubing to keep moisture out.

Surprisingly enough, dealer approved repairs have gone from solder and shrink wrap to silicone filled butt splices with the heat shrink as part of the connector.

I no longer get supplied with plug pieces when needing to replace a sensor plug on a wiring harness. I now get shipped the plug already put together with a 4" pig tail instead.

 

[aczlan]

Been there, done that!

Look for rust on the 2" receiver housing. In my case, the Dodge Ram 2500 came with a 2.5" receiver with a 0.5" spacer so it would accept 2" receiver components. That sleeve and the trailer hitch connection collected water and rusted, breaking the circuit to the trailer brakes in my case. Like a light switch some turned off I went from excellent brakes to absolutely nothing!

If you are grounding through the trailer hitch instead of the trailer wiring plug, you are doing it wrong...

I am a hard stickler on good tires and brakes though, U-Haul doesn't give you a choice and they underrate their trailers to make them "legal" even though their size means they are routinely overloaded which is why you see so many of them upside down in the median of the Interstate

If a U-Haul trailer is upside down in the median, chances are that the person who loaded it didn't load it with enough tongue weight and it swayed itself off of the road.

As for being underrated, they're built to be loaded to their max weight and run that way all the time by people who paid the damage waiver and don't care what they do to the rental trailer, most trailers aren't designed to be loaded to their max weight all the time and abused like that.

Aaron Z

 

[aczlan]

Surprisingly enough, dealer approved repairs have gone from solder and shrink wrap to silicone filled butt splices with the heat shrink as part of the connector.

I no longer get supplied with plug pieces when needing to replace a sensor plug on a wiring harness. I now get shipped the plug already put together with a 4" pig tail instead.

Probably due to the number of "technicians" or "mechanics" who are incapable of following the directions to unpin and repin a connector without damaging it, plus, then they can also shave 0.05 hours off of the repair time they will pay because you "just" have the clip off the old plug and connect the new pigtail.

Aaron Z

 

[Dftodd]

Probably due to the number of "technicians" or "mechanics" who are incapable of following the directions to unpin and repin a connector without damaging it, plus, then they can also shave 0.05 hours off of the repair time they will pay because you "just" have the clip off the old plug and connect the new pigtail.

Aaron Z

For me it's no big deal. It's by the hour for me. But dang, some of those pin connectors are tiny. I have to assemble it under a large magnifying glass.

And forget using my prescription safety glasses. I have to get my regular bifocals for any fine work like that. And with tendon damage in my thumb, it makes fine detail motor skills a challenge. Actually not really a challenge. But painful due to cramping.

Then.... if you reverse a pin location, accidently applying a power wire to the ground location

I'm glad they went that route

 

[dodge man]

I’m now in the same boat as Hay Dude, my trailer brakes are weak.

 

[Dftodd]

I added trailer brakes to my trailer. New hubs, bearings, backing plates, battery box, brake away, etc......

One thing I did was run a dedicated ground for the brakes on each side. Ground wires were grounded to the frame, but also ties into the ground wire for the trailer plug.

Didn't take much more effort to run the extra wire while running the power wire for the brakes. And seems to have given me more reliability with the trailer brakes.