Electric trailer brakes

[Redlands Okie]

When you go get the electric controller keep a couple things in mind.
1. Get one with a digital readout so you can know what you have it set at for feature use in different conditions or loads. Loaded and unloaded will need different settings usually.
2. Make sure the read out can be read in BRIGHT light so you can easily read it going down the road. Blue light seems to work better than red read outs for me.
3. Get one that is adjustable for how hard it sets the trailor breaks and for how quick it activates when you apply the trucks breaks.
4. Now for the one thing that many installers do not do. Have the brake controller installed where you can easily see it, adjust it, but for darn sure where you can easily reach it WITHOUT looking at it so you can manually activate the trailor breaks. This is incredibly useful if / when the trailor starts to fishtail a bit from ice, water, debris on the road or poor loading. You can reach down and WITHOUT LOOKING gently apply the trailor breaks and not hit the vehicle breaks. This allows the trailor to straighten up and get things back under control often times. This also allows you to pay attention where your driving and going instead of looking down at the dash. Bridges icing over in winter time are a prime example of a issue that one would not think you would encounter. And that dump trailor will be easy to load incorrectly with the resulting problems to deal with. Practice with it a bit and its not a bad idea to tap it once after you first hook on to make sure the breaks are working.

 

[Fallon]

I'm happy with my Teknosha Prodigy 3. My 2009 Tacoma had a pigtail in the glove box. 1 end plugged in under the dash, you had to solder or crimp the other to the pigtail on the controller. Easy install, but I'd find a pro to do the install if you aren't familiar with electrical stuff or brakes.

My F250 beater came with some cheap no name time delay type controller. I hate it, no matter how you adjust it the trailer brakes hit to hard a second into braking, or occasionally not enough. Do yourself a favor & get a good momentum sensing unit.

As others said a digital display is handy, but not required. I rarely look at my display now & adjust by feel. The display makes for food staeting spots though. Every time you hitch up or load/unload you should adjust your controller. Get up to 30 or so on clear road & hit the manual lever. The trailer brakes should aggressively slow you down. Keep upping the voltage/gain until you lock up the brakes, then back it off so they don't lock up. Will take you 5-10 minutes the first time, then 30 seconds maybe a minute after a few times when you get a feel for it.

It should be easily reachable for adjustment & oh **** situations. If you hit the brakes when fishtailing it's game over. But if you manually engage just the trailer brakes with the lever on the controller it will straighten things out & save your life.

See if you have a buddy you can pester for 10 minutes to have him explain his controller.

 

[TMGT]

The last prodigy I installed I bought with a pre-made harness for the truck, well worth the small expense.

 

[nikdfish]

I'll +1 the Tekonsha Prodigy line and the advice to mount where reachable without looking. The Prodigy has the nice feature of additional "profiles" affecting how the controller applies the current setting which you can select by a single button press to increment through the list. Each "bump" increases the aggressiveness of the brake application timeline, while keeping within the base settings min/max values. Example, you might use the base setting for empty, +1 for a light load +3 for a heavy load, etc.

Be sure to read the manual regarding the trailer brakes. Some need manual adjustment after they wear in over about 200 miles, some will automatically adjust when rolled in reverse - see which is true of your trailer. The initial setting of the brake controller also requires a bit of driving & experimentation to find the point where the setting is as high as possible without resulting in trailer brakes locking up significantly before the tow vehicle brakes. This is best done after a bit of slow driving & light brake application to do an initial "wear-in" of the trailer brakes (the manual will describe it best).

Nick

 

[BoylermanCT]

Ditto on the Tekonsha P3 Prodigy. Excellent controller, easy to change trailer settings if you own multiple trailers of different sizes and weights.

 

[Michael Aos]

I have the Tekonsha 90195 P3 Electronic Brake Control and Tekonsha 3040-P Brake Control Wiring Adapter for Toyota in my cart.

 

[Travelover]

Tekonsha fan here, too. Slightly off topic, but interesting to me is that when installing a brake controller on new vehicles with advanced safety systems like automatic braking, Tekonsha recommends installing a 1 amp diode in the tap off the tow vehicle's brake switch. The diode prevents back feeding into the vehicle's system. One down side to this is that when you manually apply the trailer brakes using the controller, it will not light the trailer brake lights. With no diode, the tow vehicle (a 2017 Highlander in this particular case) will throw codes and the cruise control will not operate.

 

[Fallon]

The last prodigy I installed I bought with a pre-made harness for the truck, well worth the small expense.

I picked up up a F250 to P3 cable & a new mounting bracket for my P3. Really wanted to replace that crap time delay controler that came with my beater F250. Unfortunately I found they chopped off the stock plug to wire the crap controller. Need to get around to getting a new stock plug of a wrecked truck or something & re attach it so I can use my P3 on the F250 as well as the Tacoma.

 

[TMGT]

I'll never understand why people hack electrical systems, I guess it's to save a few bucks?
I just pulled the radio on my BIL 05 f150 because the only speaker that worked was the sub, he bought it used and I guess at some point, someone installed an aftermarket radio. Instead of installing an adaptor harness they cut all the wires to the main plug and put them back with crimp on spade connectors, my favorite part was where they left a cut wire that had been tapped onto another wire after removing the insulation and then held on with electrical tape.

The truck is a higher end model also so why you wouldn't spend the couple bucks to buy an adaptor is beyond me, instead they hacked the harness up.

 

[check]

Tekonsha fan here, too. Slightly off topic, but interesting to me is that when installing a brake controller on new vehicles with advanced safety systems like automatic braking, Tekonsha recommends installing a 1 amp diode in the tap off the tow vehicle's brake switch. The diode prevents back feeding into the vehicle's system. One down side to this is that when you manually apply the trailer brakes using the controller, it will not light the trailer brake lights. With no diode, the tow vehicle (a 2017 Highlander in this particular case) will throw codes and the cruise control will not operate.

Well, that is certainly a bummer! We WERE looking at the new (2017) Highlander, but I think we'll pass now.