Electric trailer brake diagnosis

[Music] i'm fixing it i'm filming it [Music] well hello everyone well today we're going to work on this trailer here i just want to double check the electric brakes i think one side is grabbing more than the other so i don't know if it's a brake adjustment or a faulty magnet but that's what we're going to do today and in fact i'm going to show you how to test electric brakes this is a 3500 pound trailer i had a custom order because most single axle trailers do not require brakes but i wanted brakes now for this to work of course you need to hook it up to your truck your suv but you got to have brakes on it and in order for that you got to have one of these brake controller now that one's an aftermarket one that is by reese but it could be any number ones this is the 2006 chev so it didn't come factory but now the newer trucks comes factory with a built-in brake controller with gain so really handy so first things first even on a factory truck things can go rusty lose connection and everything so you want to make sure things are functioning properly here's a basic schematic that um i made and uh your typical four pin that's what you'll see on a lot of smaller vehicles you do not have the ability to have uh it's all has your ground your running lights brake lights and your left and your right signal and your brakes so and here's a common relay those are the most common relays so bosch healy but sometimes you need them on certain applications but you know there's a diagram for that but here's going to be your most common here your seven pin and then your six pin and interior exterior so to continue on with these tests we want to make sure things are functioning properly and that includes your connection at your 7-pin this is a 7-pin connector now i have this nice fancy tester you just plug it in and you kind of go through it now i believe the newer trucks even have self-diagnostics but uh we'll plug this in and see what we get uh we should have a left turn tail markers right turn back up which i don't have a backup uh brake that's what we want to see come on when i hit the brakes and a constant 12 volt so let's plug this in and see what happens so already i got a constant 12 volt and let's go through everything here okay yeah you can see my left tail marker yes you can see my right tail marker there you go you can see the tm that's tail markers that's your when your lights are on now let's try uh the brake what we can do also now is go to the actual brake controller and slide it and see if the brake light comes on with just that because your brakes should work with your brake controller as well so let's give that a try okay so what you guys see i'm in the truck this is where you need a buddy to help you anyways i'll take a look back at the video i'm sure it's working so uh we know we got a good connection back there and like i said factory connections at the truck there's so much salt and dirt and everything that's where connectors can get dirty corroded and loose so confirmed everything works there since we have like minus 35 and 40 degrees celsius winters i always take my battery out at winter time i don't leave it in the trailer so that's called your breakaway battery and i'll show you what that will do but let's test it make sure i got 12 volts [Music] and we got 13 volts more than enough there okay so let's install this okay so the idea of a breakaway box and again you want to tie this to your vehicle in such a way that it's independent of your chains so even if this comes off and your chains are hanging you want your brakes to come on okay so what again this will be tied to your vehicle and in case of an emergency this gets pulled out there you go now let's go to the wheels and the wheels should be locked okay here's the driver's side wheel should be locked yes it is i have it off the ground [Applause] let's go to the passenger side there you go that's that's locked too so again i'm off the ground so we know our breakaway is working let's get on to the next test well before we get on to the next test let's make sure we put this back in it can only go in one way there you go and to confirm go to your tires give them a rotation let's get this off [Music] won't even break it well i'm glad that tool was given to me well i have to grab some electricity like butter let's get this cap off oh got that off okay so it was kind of tight just a little bit backed off spacer and grab the bearings drop in the dirt and while of course we will definitely repack these well we got this all apart there we go so here see what your armature is [Applause] this is your magnet now most electric uh brakes magnets have some hole indicators and they're kind of like wear marks as long as you can see them they're wearing good if you don't see them well then they have officially worn too much and you best replace that magnet okay you want to make sure that this your magnet moving freely to on its post that's what gets sucks up to the back of the drum that's what gets sucked up to this back of the drum and that's what will make the depending if you're going forward or reverse so i'll suck out and grab the drum as it's rotating and so make sure everything moves nice and freely okay our next test will be let's confirm the wiring so basically the main wiring is right here this blue one that's the main wiring that's coming from the front of the trailer and then these two white tails piggy tail these two white wires piggy tailed to the two green wires going in here and then the brown ones they go to the they go in inside the axle to the other side to connect to those two green wires so that's how that works so basically if one side fails the other side will still help it'll still work okay so what we're going to do now we're going to start the truck and we're going to go to the brake controller and manually uh press it in and out and we should see the voltage change there you go eight volts so we're getting a good eight volts there for sure okay release i'm just going to go to the other side okay so i did the other side and why don't we measure the resistance of our magnet they should be the same okay so the other side measured 3.5 3.6 let's see what this side measures 3.7 3.6 so the other side measured the same so the magnets are kind of working the same but that's that's good that is within range for this size you contact your manufacturer but again this is two two and a quarter by ten inch our next test will be doing the amperage to do the amperage test we got to know the positive side of it first because that's what we'll have to disconnect so what we're going to do we're going to do an amperage test and for that we need to do the positive side disconnect that we gotta set our meter to amperage and make sure you can handle the amperage okay this can handle up to 10 amps so we're going to go there now okay so we are on apps so what we have to do we have to kind of hook this in series so we go from the from the power to the continuing power of the magnet all the way so that's 2.34 amps okay release okay let's go to the other side okay well we're getting 2.3 amps here 2.6 amps there so we're all within specs and make sure they're adjusted properly and uh well what we're going to do we're going to wire things back up again and uh repack the bearings i'm going to show you how to do that there's got to be tons of videos on on that already and uh we'll get this thing buttoned back together but all in all everything is within specs it looks good so i'm just going to put a little uh little lithium grease on the moving points here make sure everything is moving properly feels like it is but i think that's all the tests that we can do well i got everything back on double check everything make sure it works i'm just going to pull the brake away let's see if everything locks up [Applause] pulling it now there that stopped it pretty good didn't it [Applause] double check with the other tire to make sure it's hooked up properly yeah let's see if they unlock when i re-hook the breakaway switch i can hear him there we go there you have it folks that's how you test out your magnetic brakes all the way from your brake controller to your truck connection trailer connection all the way to the back so i hope that helps you guys and good luck with your project

Channel: FARMBOY FIXES

Views: 98,269

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Id: r8sFoL3VLMA

Length: 12min 23sec (743 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 14 2021