Thanks to all those who provided input on this one-time (hopefully!) braking issue.
I just got the truck back from the shop where a full four wheel brake inspection was performed. The technician found that the front driver side rotor was discolored so it had indeed seen some excessive heat. That being said, it wasn’t warped, the calipers weren’t sticking or grooved and there was no rust present. The pads are 40% worn so with over half their life left it didn’t seem appropriate to change them. (The mechanic concurred.) They witnessed nothing wrong with the hydraulic lines or any of the hoses. The brakes on the other wheels were similarly given a clean bill of health. The tech took the truck for a spin and did several hard applications of the brakes. He couldn’t get the brakes to lock up and the shop’s thermal probe indicated no out of the ordinary rotor temperatures – of course all this testing is being done without the truck being hitched to my trailer.
That was the end of the first day in the garage and, although I never had any warning lights come on, I asked that they keep the truck for a second day and scan for codes. I wasn’t holding out much hope that they would find any fault records and I was correct, no error codes were present. They did mention however that according to a recent TSB there can be (and I quote the bulletin) “intermittent nuisance activation of the electronic stability control (ESC) during low speed turning maneuvers while towing a trailer only”. The way the bulletin reads it seems this condition is also accompanied by a warning light and of course an error code in memory – but, as I say, no such happenings on my truck. I had them perform the associated software update (i.e. recalibrate the ABS module) anyway but I hold out little hope that this will solve the problem.
Such is the nature of intermittent problems but with the mechanical systems in check I will head to the lake next weekend feeling a little bit more at ease but of course still concerned. Although out of winter storage, the trailer is not kept at my house in the city so when I go pick the trailer up Monday evening(to de-winterize and provision it for the lake) I’ll take that opportunity to do some pretty hard brake testing - and see if the problem recurs. In his May 6th post, APT suggested I set the gain on the brake controller a bit more, so re-establishing the threshold at which the trailer brakes come on will be part of my preparations.
Hopefully the problem will not resurface. If it does I’ll be waiting by the side of the road, letting things cool down and then restarting with trailer sway control turned off to see if that has any effect. (My equalizer bars, moderate speed and common sense provide all the sway control I need lol.) If disengaged TSC still doesn’t help and the brake on that wheel locks up again then I guess it is tow truck time – not a fun way to start the May Long Weekend.
Here’s hoping for a nice break at the lake – and not a bad brake on the way to it!
