Electric over hydraulic - anyone using them ?

valhalla360 wrote:
Electric or hydraulic...what?

These..



Which is a disk brake system.

The problem with disk brakes on a trailer is getting the hydraulic pressure from the vehicle to the trailers brakes..

To get around the need for hydraulic hoses that would have to connect from the tow vehicle to the trailer there is a Master Cylinder/reservoir/electric pump that is mounted on the trailer.

Looks like this..



The Master cylinder/reservoir/electric pump is now controlled via your vehicles electric brake controller..

Hence, the name "Electric over Hydraulic" (AKA EOH).

Reason for disk brakes, improved braking with less fade.

Downsides is mainly cost, parts alone in kit form is running around $1K and if you had to pay for labor to retrofit you could easily add $1K-$2K to the price tag..

Secondary downside is not all brake controllers play well with the EOH controller and may require considerable tweeking and adjusting to get it to work correctly.

Additionally you now have another hydraulic system that will need to be checked and monitored for fluid levels and contamination and you now have a lot of non standard hydraulic hoses, lines and parts that are not "off the shelf" readily available easy to find parts.

To me, it makes a simple braking system overly complex and expensive and personally most of the weak braking issues with drum brakes people have can be solved by simply upsizing the brake wires on the RV. Most manufacturers tend to skimp on the wire size they use for the drum brakes which causes as much as 20% less braking power..

I would try replacing the electric brake wiring with a much heavier ga wire at a fraction of the cost of EOH as the first line of defense..

Myself, running two pairs of 10 ga wire to replace the one pair of 14 ga factory wire was a huge noticeable improvement in my brakes.