Intermittent brakes!!!!

[Nicholsfamily05]

Good morning.

So have a question as I am trying to find out where my issues lays.

Took our rig out for the first weekend yesterday with our new truck.

Hooked up to truck and the it didn't immediately show up as trailer connected. Pulled the plug out checked connections and replaced it. Truck recognized it and all was good, did my pull test and it worked fine.

Pulled out our yard and was on highway 5 minutes later. Got to the top of the bridge and dash board started lighting up and dinging.
It would flash check trailer brakes and then check trailer wiring then would go completely to trailer brakes disconnected.
Pulled over checked what I could and bam came back to life. Started out again and 5 minutes later all over again then it would come back on and work then off.

Made it to campground as it was just down the road. Usually a 15 minute ride this time was about 25 with the stop and the super slow speeds once trailer started acting up.

So I began to check connections and everything appears fine. Started at the pin box and when removed wire nuts for brake wires saw they only had a few strands connected the rest were cut off. Cut off the wires and redid the connects the proper way but still no luck.

So should I start removing the factory connections at the axels and redoing them or just have the dealership come out and take it at check out time.

The truck is brand new and works fine with my other two trailers.
I built my last two trailers so I know how it all works but not sure if there is anything inside this trailer that could be loose as they seem to be different gauge wires that emerge from the under belly to go to the axles that connect to even smaller haulage wires.


Wife was able to snap the photos in the truck.

[mkirsch]

There's really not too much mystery to trailer brakes once you take a look at them. Mostly it's just a wire running from the front of the truck to the back of the trailer. That wire is usually undersized from the factory, poorly routed, and poorly connected. 99.99 percent of trailer brake problems stem from that wire.

[hoosiermark]

Thanks to all who posted here. Problems sound like what I am dealing with. controller show randoml no connection at all, then nc then c. Brakes show up as working but I do not feel them, etc. This is a car trailer. When I pulled it down a rough road, I noted they came and went as the bumps occurred. Sounds like a short to me. I dropped it off at B-I-L shop today and shared all your comments about possible issues. He was glad to have knowledge of potential areas to look. Thanks Again Hoosiermark

[Nicholsfamily05]

So I located where the main wire from the pin box came out at the axles.
Removed most of the underbelly to locate it. I can see why they cover the under belly they don't want you to see the horrible work they do.
Anyways they had these really crappy wire tap kinda connections. Nice gauge wire down to a very small gauge wire.
So I removed all those connections between both axles and ran 14 gauge wire between them all.
Then heat wrapped all the connections to keep the weather out and secured each connection point so it can't move.

Guess what. Everything works now. Thank the maker!!

[Nicholsfamily05]

Started working on the brakes today.

Hooked up to truck and pulled the emergency cable and then let off the truck brakes.
Trailer didn't move. Gave the truck a good amount of gas and again trailer didn't move.

So hoping it's a connection somewhere after that. pulling out the creeper and off to work I go.
New connectors and shirk wrap to take care of them and new wire to run between axles. Not putting it inside.

[mkirsch]

Nicholsfamily05 wrote:
Amazing they can get away with all this poor quality when they boast about great quality control.

Quality control only ensures that the quality is consistent. Doesn't mean the quality is consistently good...

[Nicholsfamily05]

Tomorrow is supposed to be good weather and I have the day off of work so going to be tearing into this project and see how it goes.

Hopefully it's just replacing a few connections and we are good. But my projects never turn out that way.

And we are supposed to trade it in in a few weeks hopefully to towards our new one.

[peaeye1]

PUCampin wrote:
I had intermittent connection/overload/short issues for a while. In my case, there was too much slack on the magnet wires inside the drum, which rubbed through and would intermittently ground out.

I had the exact same thing happen several years ago.

[hbrady]

After all the things I've read about the 2015+ RAM factory IBC and 10K+ trailers I wouldn't tow a mile without ordering and installing one of these:

P3 Controller w/ RAM adapter.

I'm glad I only need light electric.

[Nicholsfamily05]

Well so many things I need to check that I honestly never thought of as with all the trailers I have owned never had a brake issue.

Guess once I get out of the dealership and have some free time I have my work cut out for me.

Have to make sure it's up and running as a friend was looking at buying it and we are looking at a new one.
Can't sell something that isn't right.

[PUCampin]

I had intermittent connection/overload/short issues for a while. In my case, there was too much slack on the magnet wires inside the drum, which rubbed through and would intermittently ground out.

[Nicholsfamily05]

Yeah our trailer is only 2 years old and we got some of the same messages on our old truck but I figured it was due to the fact that I had removed the. Integrated brake controller From the area of my left knee to the center console. Never had a big issue with it as it was mostly doing it in the driveway then would work fine on the road. So never really looked into it.

Now that it's a new truck and the issue came back I was heading to my fathers house where it is stored to work on it when a transmission line went on our brand new truck. 2000 miles and yup so not having a good month of May so far.

But I was planning on tearing it all out today and just running new wires to everything.
And removing them from the inside of the axles and putting them out side. Their factory connects look horrible and the ones I did take apart were beyond horrible.

Amazing they can get away with all this poor quality when they boast about great quality control.

[Community Alumni]

I had a similar issue. I would sporadically lose brakes on my TT. Instead of wasting time trying to track down a problem. I ripped it all out and rewired the brakes. I replaced the 7 pin box with a waterproof trailer junction box and heat shrinked ring connector on all of the connection. I ran #10 AWG back to a buss bar near the axles. From there I wired each brake to the buss bar. Instead of running the wires through the axles again, I ran them through a section of plastic conduit that I installed on the outside of the axles.

In the end I found that all of my grounds were badly corroded under the wire nut, a grommet was missing from one of the holes in the axles, and the wires had been rubbing on the inside of the axles. The wires had rubbed so much you could tell the color of the wires anymore. Any one of those could've been the source of the problem.

[ACZL]

It's in the trailer. More than likely you have some brakes that went south on ya like southernsky said. I bought a brand new 4 place V-nose enclosed snowmobile trailer in June of '14. Winter of '14-'15 no problem. Dropped trailer off at dealer for summer. Go to bring home in Dec and msg on dash kept alternating between trl connected/disconnected. Being a lousy winter, only rode 1x but PO'd as to what was going on w/ a brand new trl. Stopped at our RV dealer, they checked out trucks plug and AOK. Brought trl into RV dealer to check it out and 3 of 4 brakes were not working! After many e-mails back and forth w/ trl mfr, was able to get Dexter to cough up a check to have all 4 replaced. Dexter said it was due to lack of maintenance--- owners manual for brakes by Dexter stinks. Upon replacing the brakes, it was discovered that there were no adjustment caps/plugs which allowed copious amount of salt to get inside bake components. Plus a couple of the connections were poorly connected.

What's happening is that the truck(s) are sending a signal to the trl once it's plugged in to "verify" all is well. If all is well, the signal (namely for brakes) gets sent back to trk as the circuit is complete--AOK. If not, you get the msg displayed on dash.

[southernsky]

Had trouble with my Ram doing the same thing. Turned out had a bad magnet in the trailer brakes.

[1492]

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