? about braking indicator light.

Then wire from brake pedal and ground to a polarized female socket. Select an LED lamp and put adhesive Velcro on it and the back (non reflective) side of the mirror. Enough wire and polarized male plug to reach the mirror. Done.

j-d wrote:
Brake Buddy, like others, come with Gee-Whiz Electronics to confirm that everything is hunky-dory.
What Butch wants is something simple and independent to keep all that electronics honest. Brake goes down, Light goes on.
For a vehicle with a roof rack, like Crosstrek, I'd consider connecting to the high-mounted "third" brake light and putting an Amber LED Turn Signal light on the rack facing forward.
Butch, you must have a different rear view "look" than we do. I can barely see the roof of our Nissan Frontier pickup from the inside rear view mirror of the coach. And can't see the sides at all except in a sharp turn. So for us, something on he front side of the inside mirror of the toad wouldn't work. Would work with a rearview camera on the coach but we don't have one.
Hate to run wire to a light in the coach, but that might be my answer.
If I could see a light in or on the toad, that's what I'd do. To me, the idea is to keep the fail-safe warning as simple as possible.
I suggested Amber because it's not legal to show a red light forward, and Signal because I don't think a running or marker light would be visible under all conditions. LED because it'd work on small gauge wire and not cause any imbalance in the toad's lighting system.

You are 100% right in what I'm looking to do. Plain and simple, simple for kind of a simple guy like me. Good Idea of the amber LED lights. I do have a rear view camera and I can see the front of my toad through it. I wouldn't keep the camera on it all of the time but I do use it to look back periodically to make sure everything is ok with the toad. So I would be able to check the brake pedal position also at that time. On my Stealth brake system it tells me when the brakes are applied by the unit as the controller has a "bb" that appears in a screen on the unit to show brakes are applied but it does not tell me if for some reason when the controller releases the brakes that they actually did release. With the Stealth brake system there is nothing to slide around to engage the brakes but it does have a cable running from under the driver seat to the brake pedal and as we know cables an at times bind up and not release the brake pedal back to the normal position.

I guess a real simple way of doing it would be put a mirror on the back of the toad that looked forward to the front of the motorhome. Then if the brake lights are on when you are not stepping on the brakes the brake lights would be on and you could see it in the MH mirror looking at the mirror on the toad. Kind of a Mickey Mouse setup but it would work I guess.

Brake Buddy, like others, come with Gee-Whiz Electronics to confirm that everything is hunky-dory.
What Butch wants is something simple and independent to keep all that electronics honest. Brake goes down, Light goes on.
For a vehicle with a roof rack, like Crosstrek, I'd consider connecting to the high-mounted "third" brake light and putting an Amber LED Turn Signal light on the rack facing forward.
Butch, you must have a different rear view "look" than we do. I can barely see the roof of our Nissan Frontier pickup from the inside rear view mirror of the coach. And can't see the sides at all except in a sharp turn. So for us, something on he front side of the inside mirror of the toad wouldn't work. Would work with a rearview camera on the coach but we don't have one.
Hate to run wire to a light in the coach, but that might be my answer.
If I could see a light in or on the toad, that's what I'd do. To me, the idea is to keep the fail-safe warning as simple as possible.
I suggested Amber because it's not legal to show a red light forward, and Signal because I don't think a running or marker light would be visible under all conditions. LED because it'd work on small gauge wire and not cause any imbalance in the toad's lighting system.

Go to this Ready Brake Link and scroll down to the "In-Dash Light Monitor." It is about half way down.

Buy that.

Wire it like they say, fused/switched wire from the fuse box to light in dash, then to the connector at the rear, then to ground.

Then get one of these 12v relays. Wire pins 85 and 86 to your toad's brake light wire and ground. Run a wire from pins 30 and 87 to the front of your toad and install the matching connector for your "In-Dash Light Monitor." (Do not use pin 87A.) Make a 3 or 4 foot long, removable, extension with connectors on both ends to run from the RV to the toad.

Now, whenever the toad's brake pedal is pressed, by anything, for any reason, a warning light comes on in your RV dashboard.

I have mine wired that way, and it works like a friggin' charm.

A lot of the systems don't indicate the toad's brakes are applied. They indicate the auxiliary brake was activated. Those are not the same thing. My Ready Brake light was designed to hook to the Ready Brake, but I wanted it hooked to the toad's brakes instead.

Butch50,

As you can read, there are a few ways to approach this. The manor in which I did it was to help and alleviate a problem I had. You see, when I was towing our '04 Jeep Rubicon, I do, like always, setup the toad lights using the stock Jeep tail lights as toad lights. It works flawless every time. However, this method can present a problem in some cases.

In some vehicles, especially when using a secondary braking system like Ready Brake, Brake Buddy, Even Brake, and many more, when the toads brake pedal is depressed, the toads brake lights will be activated. That occurs even in some vehicles even if the toads key is completely out of the ignition, much less being in the "off" position.

So, what you have is, conflicting signals being sent to the same bulb back there. I could go on but you get the point. So, what I did was, like you stated, find the "Cold" side of the toads brake light switch and, cut that outgoing wire and then, send it to a tiny, two-way toggle switch I mounted in the door jamb of the Jeep.

Now, I wired one side of that toggle switch to a long wire (through the pig tail)all the way to the dash of the coach, to an LED indicator light I installed. I then wired the other side of the toggle switch right back to the cut wire on the toads brake light switch output side.

Now, when towing, I flip the switch forward so the Jeeps brake light switch sends its signal to the dash LED in the coach. That tells me the pedal in the Jeep is ACTUALLY BEING APPLIED by the Ready Brake I was using at the time.

Then, when driving the Jeep, I flip the switch to the rear and, that sends the brake light signal, right to the rear tail lights as it's supposed to go. I killed THREE BIRDS with one stone that way. It's a simple and very easy system to setup. Good luck.
Scott

I use the SMI Stay N Play system. Mine uses the 4 wire option for connection with the toad. One of the wires connects to the brake light switch in the toad and to a monitor light installed on the MH instrument panel. I have two cables between the MH and the toad. One handles the toad lights and the other handles the SMI wiring to the toad for the SMI unit I have sitting under the back seat of my toad.

I have the Blue Ox Patriot brake system. It has a wireless monitor that installs in the motorhome that indicates, among other things, when the toad brakes are applied. It probably requires the Patriot system to work.

We have an Invisibrake (IB) on our 2010 Corolla that we tow with a 2007 View.

The IB kit includes a simple "Two-stage motorhome monitor: IB includes an LED monitor for a visual reference of braking activity; an audible alert at the motorhome will warn you if the brakes have been on for too long."

Although the monitor pieces are part of the IB kit, I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work with any brake system. It simply runs a wire from the toad's brake light switch cold side to a light/audio alarm mounted on/in the MH dash. The audio alarm "chip" just hangs in the dash under the light.

IB is designed to brake for 15 seconds regardless of how long you press the MH brake pedal. If the toad brakes are still activated after 20 seconds, the alarm sounds. You can release the MH brake and re-press to start the cycle again.

Instead of having a separate plug that would have to be connected/disconnected with each toad hookup, I rewired the 6-pin plugs on the back of the MH and front of the toad (Yours is probably a 7-pin.) I used the pin for the backup lights since you don't backup when towing.

I don't know if Roadmaster sells the monitor pieces alone. You could contact RM if this interests you.

Check the parts list on the http://roadmasterinc.com/pdf/85-4649-32.pdfIB installation instructions here for the monitor parts.

Good Luck!