Trailer Braking

What's the make and model of the controller you installed? That needs to be known before any worthwhile advice can be offered.

agreed if you can tell us the make and model we can probably solve this for you. Also the manual brake lever is there to stop trailer sway, not to use for a normal stop.

You may first need to check the actual brake drum setting of the trailer wheel brake. They should be manually adjustable the same as any wheel brake setup with the screwdriver star wheel setting. I adjusted my OFF-ROAD POPUP trailer single axle brake drums with a screwdriver to the point where the shoes just make very slight contact with the drum and the wheel still spins freely...

After you have done the manual setting then go with the 25MPH road test setting your brake controller voltage setting...


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I use my manual thumb lever knobs all the time to slow down my truck and trailer without using the truck brakes.

I definitely do this at the first stop I come to when first starting out to make my trailer brakes are working properly...

Roy Ken

After wearing out/destroying my 2nd set of electric drum brakes on my 38' Cardinal 5th wheel going in/out of Silverton, CO, I'm going to convert to disc brakes. It will be an expensive conversion, but our safety is worth it and in the long run it will save me $.

Given that this is "The Beginners Forum", I think an appropriate response is, "Yes, electric brakes (run by electronic controllers):

1) Do operate in a fairly grabby manner."

And:

2) Generally require that you avoid extended light braking (which does cause your trailer do more that it's fair share of braking and can result in real wear and tear), and instead, try more to "brake moderately in surges" (making your tow vehicle do it's fair share), and then let off the brakes.

(These are general rules and must be done with a good dose of common sense).

Newer, fancier trucks with the factory-installed, integral brake controller do a nicer job of picking up how hard/far you press the pedal.

Electronic controllers rely on secondary mechanism of sensing deceleration.

Indeed you need to do some adjustments and get things right, but if you turn them down to where you don't feel much, you may lack full braking power for an emergency stop.

Electric brakes and electronic controllers do have a grabby feel to them.

All controllers that I have seen have a set of instructions on how to set them up initially. Usually involves an empty parking lot and some control knob (there are two of them) dialing in. Did you do that procedure?

then you go out on the highway and do some tweaking.

Thank you for all the responses. This is a brand new trailer, and out first time with an RV. I found the problem, apparently when they did the PDI they didn't check the brake adjustment, I adjusted all four brakes and then tweaked the controller and it is now much smother.
Disk brakes would be much better option. We just purchased the trailer and pulled it home, 45 miles, so the dealer can't tell me they adjusted the brakes.

Thank all of you again for your input, it is appreciated.

Thanks for letting us know what you found. Those brakes must have been way out of adjustment to perform like you were describing.