Hopkins Agility electric brake controller problem

[eldee]

Ok, I have the electric brake controller set up as recommended by the manufacturer. Brakes on fiver are adjusted and all work properly. Controller is set to max sensitivity. Takes a pretty heavy foot to get the controller to display anything above 25-30, and does not feel as if the trailer brakes are doing much. Reach down and depress the red button on the controller and the trailer brakes REALLY kick in, which confirms to me they will work, just not as fast/hard as I feel they should.
Manufacturers web site was no help, anybody here have any advice?
Thanks in advance, Larry

[RCMAN46]

You have a proportional inertia brake controller. When the controller is set up correctly you will not and should not feel the trailer braking the TV. It should feel more like there is no trailer and brakes much like if there was not a trailer attached.

A wiring upgrade most likely will not help anything if you are seeing only 20-30% on the display with heavy braking. The controller will increase the voltage to the trailer brakes until the accelerometer sees a decrease in acceleration. Thus if the controller reading is less than 90 % then it is able to supply all the voltage and current needed as seen by the accelerometer.

If you have the controller setting to high it can get you in trouble during a stand on the brakes situation. The trailer brakes may lock and you may then find the trailer leading the way to the accident or turn the whole system on its side as you skid on you side or upside down to the accident.

[eldee]

WOW!! Nice rewire job John! Seems most electrical problems can be traced back to a bad ground, and I should have thought of that myself! I will check voltages at 7 pin and again at the hubs to confirm full voltage, however I'm not confident this is the problem, and I'll explain why: On my controller, you can "feather" the manual brake button to administer more or less power to the brakes. Normal braking will result in a reading on the controller to go up to, say, a reading of 25-30 and does not seem to give much braking power. If I reach down and manually depress button on controller and get a reading of say 50, you can really feel the trailer brakes assisting in the slowdown! If I were to fully depress button to get reading of 99, I'm sure brakes would lock, or at least brake extremely aggressively. I just want this controller to be able to deliver this much force automatically as intended. Something is not set up right, I'll continue to muddle my way around and figure this out sooner or later! Thanks again everyone, Larry

[JBarca]

eldee wrote:

Brakes work VERY well when applied manually, seems this indicates system works, just not like it should.

Both settings are set to max, should almost lock brakes up, right? BTW, this is a Carri-Lite, weighs about 10,000 lbs or so, all 4 brakes recently adjusted. System has behaved like this since first installed over 2 years ago. Maybe I'm expecting too much, just feels like I have to use a pretty heavy pedal to slow down. Thanks again everyone, Larry

There is another thought and it just rang when you said you have been using this 2 years and you need a lot pedal push to slow down.

Here is the thought. The manual lever is a direct max power, does this controller by chance have an amps read out? If so what are the amps? both manual full squeeze and then by the foot?

The manual system gives it all she's got fast whether or not it is all getting to the wheels or not if still an unknown. The automatic mode takes a small bit of time as they know you do not want to lock up the brakes.

Where I am going with this is voltage drop in the wiring on the camper. I do not know about yours exactly, however many towable campers have very poor wire sizing and connections. Small wire and bad connections rob precious power from ever making it to the wheels.

See here were I upgraded my wiring, it makes a difference in stopping. I borrowed this from forum member Les Adams.
Independent Brake Wire Feed Upgrade

If you want to test if you are loosing power to the wheels you can try this. Do a voltage check at the truck 7 wire plug with a known amount of manual lever being depressed. What is that voltage? Then go to the farthest wheel that is wired as a place to start. Your going to have to figure out how to get your test lead right on the magnet coils wires. Ideally do several wheels and the same amount of manual lever?

Edit: Or do the truck voltage check under the dash where the controller power is entering the wiring harness to head out the back of the truck. That is the real source.

What is the difference in voltage from the truck 7 wire plug to the brake magnets? When you only have 12.7 to 13.7 volts to work with, losing a volt or 2 just getting to the wheels is going to make for sluggish braking. Now the controller has to work harder to put out excess power as your loosing a high percentage in high resistance wires or connections. The high resistance can act just as bad as a totally out of adjustment brake mechanical setting.

Just passing it along in case you need something to test where the problem might be.

Hope this helps and report back what you find. We too pick up learning's from you.

John

[BarneyS]

Larry,
I am far from being an electrician, so I really cannot say much more except suggest you take it to a dealer or independent RV technician and let them troubleshoot it for you. That is what I did to get mine to work correctly after my own botched install job.
Barney

[eldee]

Barney, harness I used is the one that came from the factory with my 2004 GMC. I mated it to the harness that came with the Hopkins controller. To me it seems the two should be one hundred percent compatible, maybe I'm missing something you're trying to tell me?

[JBarca]

BarneyS wrote:


Edit: Oops, I see John and I were posting at about the same time and supplied the same link.

Barney, like minds think alike.... Actually your link was to the model with the harness, mine the one without....LOL

[carringb]

eldee wrote:
WHITE PADDLE ON THE SIDE??? Is this the Hopkins Agility model? Didn't see this in the installation manual... Please advise...

Sorry, I didn't realize they updated that model to a solid state version. Please disregard my earlier comment.

[BarneyS]

Larry,
I believe your last reply gave a big clue to the problem. GM, sometime near the time period of your "old" brake controller harness that you kept from your old vehicle, changed the wiring and the old harness will not work with newer vehicles. I would bet a beer that if you get a new harness, specific to your present vehicle, that your problem will be solved. Just about everything you have said points to a wiring problem in my opinion. It might be best to just do as I did and hardwire it in and forget about the harness.
Barney

[Jim-Linda]

Larry, FWIW, electric controllers braking force doesn't depend on brake pedal "force". As soon as you begin depressing the brake, the signal from the TV stoplight switch enables the brake controller. As you slow, the pendulum movement is what apply's more braking to the trailer. Ergo, more brake pedal force moves the pendulum forward to provide more braking. I suggest you try the slow speed test in a parking lot and then tweak your settings. Good Luck

Jim

[eldee]

First off, thanks for all the input from everyone, I'm sure we can figure this out, if it takes till spring when I start hauling again! Yes, it is the Hopkins Agility model. It is set up straight within the truck, with the tilt about level front to back. I installed using the factory harness from my 2004 GMC truck mated with the harness from the controller. Maybe I should pull it out and double check wiring configuration, seems it was very straight forward and hard to screw it up. Brakes work VERY well when applied manually, seems this indicates system works, just not like it should. Both settings are set to max, should almost lock brakes up, right? BTW, this is a Carri-Lite, weighs about 10,000 lbs or so, all 4 brakes recently adjusted. System has behaved like this since first installed over 2 years ago. Maybe I'm expecting too much, just feels like I have to use a pretty heavy pedal to slow down. Thanks again everyone, Larry

[BarneyS]

I believe that this is the controller you are asking about. I have no experience with it but it looks like a good controller and I suggest you check carefully how it is wired into your truck. I had just about the same experience with my Prodigy when I first installed it. Finally took it to a dealer and they found I had it wired in wrong. It has worked fine since they corrected it for me. Perhaps you have mis-wired it just as I did.
Barney

Edit: Oops, I see John and I were posting at about the same time and supplied the same link.

[JBarca]

Trying to help the cause here,

Is this the controller you have? There is an instructions pdf there too.

http://www.hopkinstowingsolutions.com/products/brake-controllers/agility_brake_control.html

If it is, it is a proportional controller which is good, just it may not be a digital one.

First is the unit mounted mounted like these instructions state? Both on the angle position from the side and straight ahead?

If it is, then it sounds like the gain and boost needs to be tweaked in. They call this the "power" setting and then the "sensitivity" setting. Especially if the manual lever give good braking.

It appears on this controller the "power" setting adjusts the max amount for power from 0 to 100%. Then the "sensitive" is adjusted to make it happen quicker, be more sensitive.

Did you do the 20 to 25 mph aggressive braking setup to keep up'ing the power setting until you almost lock up? And did you try this with the manual button too? If the manual works then it sort of points to the power and sensitivity settings of the unit is mounted correctly.

Pending the loaded weight of your camper and how close to full GVWR of the camper, the brakes may not actually lock but should brake real hard.

Lets make sure we are talking the correct controller and verify what you did do.

If your brakes have not been adjusted at each wheel in a while, the lining wear will need more power to achieve the same braking. This is not controller specification but an electric brake thing.

Hope this helps

John

PS. The "time" based controllers on a large camper are the ones that do not work so good. Yours is not in the group, at least yet anyway. But as said, the older inertia technology has to be set up right and then it can give good service. I myself do not have your exact controller but have adjusted others.

[eldee]

WHITE PADDLE ON THE SIDE??? Is this the Hopkins Agility model? Didn't see this in the installation manual... Please advise...

[carringb]

You have to set "level" with the white paddle on the side. This turns the inertia pendulum so it reacts to your braking. Nothing wrong with pendulum sensors, just harder to "dial-in". I keep my Tekonsha Voyager as a spare under my seat because it less likely to be damaged by a short in the trailer wiring, compared to the digital inertia-sensor controllers (like the P3, which I normally run).