brakes not working help

For me it was the connector.. very corroded. Bought a new one at Napa for $7 and fixed it in 20 mins.

Press the manual brake control on the controller. Does the indicator light up? If no, odds there is no power to the controller. If it does, verify that the connection to the brake pedal is solid.

Seven Way Trailer Wiring. Where you don't see screws for the connections, you're looking at the ends that plug together. The screw connections, of course, could be loose.

The meter on controller prong of tow vehicle plug should be set to measure not the resistance, but the voltage.

Assuming this is cheap timing controller... When you press the brake pedal or controller "panic button" (manual override), the meter should read about 10-12V with motor off, and 13-14V in with motor running. If it doesn't, then there is a problem on tow vehicle end. Could be controller, or wires, or fuse. If it does, then there is a problem in trailer.

Attaching 12V lamp to controller prong is a better way, because you can see it from driver seat, and you can also see the delay in the lamp response, and play with the braking power slider and see if the lamp brightens and darkens accordingly.

Now, I don't remember which one is the controller prong, the one at "6 o'clock" maybe. Look in the vehicle manual or google it up, the 7-pin plug wiring is the same in most vehicles. If this all is too complicated, then you simply have to call a mobile mechanic that will come to your place, fix the problem in an hour, and charge you a few hundred bucks.

If it's an electronic brake controller, you should be able to use a TEST LAMP from "brake" to "ground" and see the controller light up as if there's a trailer connected. Then the lamp should brighten when you squeeze the manual braking feature on the controller. I say LAMP because a meter doesn't have enough resistance for the controller to "see" it.
We hitched up a trailer and had "no braking" only to find somebody'd disturbed the controller settings in the several months since last use. This Tekonsha Voyager controller has two knobs. One is initial setting of the intertia sensor and the other is the degree of brake response. Response had been set to Zero. For this reason, I suggest getting controllers with digital readout for the response setting. We'd've seen right away there was nothing dialed in. Also you can go between numbers depending on conditions. With the Voyager, we had to do it by feel.
The actual braking circuit's around 30Amps. An RV shop I spoke with said they leave the fuse if the vehicle's pre-wired for a controller, but incorporate an auto-reset circuit breaker if they add wiring themselves. What I said here is based on what I learned about Fords.

We had an issue once with brakes, but it was an 'sometimes worked and sometimes trailer brakes didn't" issue ... come to find out it was the trailer brake lines behind the tires .. the wiring had an issue .. fixed and haven't had an issue in 7 years.

AND it took a young tech at a "Grandpa used to own this, now Dad does" rv repair shop to find the problem after taking it to several name brand rv repair shops.

rtaylor0830 wrote:
where should i test.

You should test at the tow vehicle to trailer connector.

This will tell you if the problem is the tow vehicle or the trailer.

What type of truck? Factory brake controller/aftermarket?

First thing I would check as said before are any related fuses...
Then I would go to the plug and put a test light on the brake controller prong and have someone slide the brake controller lever, & also see if the controller shows a reading.

If the problem is past that, start tracing wiring back to the trailer axles. Could be something as simple as a bad connection.

Yes, it could be a fuse to the brake controller.
Could be bad brake controller as well.
It would help to know what kind of TV.

fuse