Trailer brake controller question

Hi Carl,

I would say yes you need trailer brakes working off of the truck brakes.  You have to stop that weight mass so without trailer brakes you are eating up truck brakes faster.  In a panic stop the trailer is pushing you and can try to pass you if it has no brakes. 

Tekonsha is supposed to be some of the best controllers on the market.  My experience is them is poor.   I bought the Tekonsha P3 at about $160 which was supposed to be the best money could buy a couple of years back.  It came up with a strange error when it was about 3 months old.   The error was not in the docs.  I filled out a contact form on their site several times and nobody ever answered or called me back.  I could not find a phone number for them.  I tossed it and swore off of Tekonsha.

If it is working correctly they are so nice.  The trailer is helping you stop rather than pushing you.  Good ones are proportional so the harder you push the harder the trailer brakes apply. If you are empty you back it of so it's not so aggressive to where it locks the trailer brakes up.

I too had a 10,000 plus loads on a 20,000 trailer and a failed trailer brake controller.  Here in the mountains in Washington I went through a set of brakes and rotors on the pickup in short order.

If it was me I would get it working right.  

Larry   

Hey Carl,

Here in Washington state (exerp):

(3) Brakes on all wheels. Every vehicle shall be equipped with brakes acting on all wheels except:

     (a) Trailers, semitrailers, or pole trailers of a gross weight not exceeding three thousand pounds, provided that:

     (i) The total weight on and including the wheels of the trailer or trailers shall not exceed forty percent of the gross weight of the towing vehicle when connected to the trailer or trailers; and

     (ii) The combination of vehicles consisting of the towing vehicle and its total towed load, is capable of complying with the performance requirements of RCW 46.37.351;

I would check your state laws regarding brakes.

My flatbed trailer is 14,000 GVW and has brakes on all wheels. I wouldn't have it any other way, even if it was just short trips on flat roads. My brake controller is the OEM Ford unit and it works great. I don't think I would want any controller that wasn't working as it should – in all modes.

the only time I use the manual lever is when I test the brakes everytime I use the trailer.I pull a 6 ton trailer with a 1 ton dodge loaded with wood to the pulp mill .

It's my understanding that the manual slide is used to control a trailer that is swaying out of control. Continue your speed and apply the trailer brakes slowly to straighten out the trailer.

 I installed literally hundreds of these working at a Chevy dealership and did have a few Tekonsha's DOA out of the box, hard to read much into that though 

I wonder whatever became of Diamondpilot? I know he had a boat business on the side and towed a lot of heavy loads. Id like to hear his take on this thread.

Like David, I use the manual slider to help set the sensitivity and test the trailer brakes. I haul three different trailers, with the dump trailer being the heaviest, so the sensitivity is different for all the trailers. I remember the old controllers tapped into the towing vehicles hydraulic brake systems, the new ones have an inertia sensor.

Tinbender wrote:

I wonder whatever became of Diamondpilot? I know he had a boat business on the side and towed a lot of heavy loads.

I think the three of them (Greg, Chris, Mike) were joined at the hip.

 Miss them.

Carl wrote:

Does anyone use just the manual lever to slow down with rather than the foot brake all the time? 

Nope, not a good idea. The trailer brakes are rated for the capacity of the axles, not the trailer, and especially don't include the towing vehicle or the trailers load. That's why the sensitivity adjustment is so important – you want the trailer brakes to start applying just slightly early, that keeps everything in a straight line. Plus, you will be going through a lot of trailer brakes.