Practice makes perfect

[Monkeyman_and_L]

Going to tow my Ford Escape Hybrid for the first time on a long distance trip. The RVI brake unit was having difficulty operating when I picked up the Toad from the Tow Bar installation.

We did eventually get it to operate, but being an engineer and a stickler for detail, I wanted to do dry runs of the setup before I went 900 miles.

So, tried it in the driveway, didn't hook up because that part is straight forward and I understand that and was able to do it with the tech watching. Their words were "you do that better than me" I don't know if that's entirely accurate, but the blue ox bars do make it pretty simple.

Back to the brake controller. Kept getting low voltage alerts. Checked all wiring, was getting 13.5 Volts from the charge line. Battery was showing an output of 12.1 volts (So the car battery is lower than the charge line. Not surprised). Tried a number of things but could guarantee that the charge line was working and the voltage was there.

Read up on many places that many of many of us had issues with T4 45Ah battery that was OEM. Decided to bump to a Group 48 size with 70Ah.

So far, no low voltage complaints from the RVI. Figured its something to do with a barely sized for the car 12VDC battery.

I did not go AGM this time as it was more than I could spend on an experiment. Best guess is the RVI is picky about voltage drops when it turns on the internal compressor. I can understand that, but I sure would like it to have a display installed to show error codes and voltage levels so we'd know what's going on. I almost put my meter on the unit in min/max and put in a 12VDC T device I use for voltage measurement on these types of things to determine how low it's dropping. Figure that if it was at 12.1 and pulled a lot on the compressor start it probably dropped to 11.5 and that triggered the alarm.

Anyone have a hard fast rule on these things? Personally if I'm designing the circuit I'd design it for 6 VDC operation with a better margin for failure. But I like margins on safety equipment. At least it gives warnings instead of just NOT WORKING. So that's a plus.

Anyone else have info on the RVI, Ford Escapes, or anything about towing a toad in general that a newbie to the method like me could use as good information??

[Monkeyman_and_L]

Report on first long haul trip with the Toad.

MY OH MY, that's SO much easier!

The battery upgrade seems to have been the fix. No issues at all with the brake controller.

I do think I will put in a 12VDC splitter to power the brake controller and the wireless puck from RVi so I get data readback consistently. The tiny battery in the puck only lasts for like 4 hours.

Also not a fan of the RVi commander software. It's the equivalent of an idiot light on the dashboard. Report the voltage seen by the controller ("hey, the voltage is going low, maybe I should check the charge line when I stop next") perhaps a readout of the G sensor condition so you can judge if you need to up the sensitivity. I thought the car should brake a little more, but I would be more likely to make an adjustment if I saw the sensor data.

I'm a systems analyst in some of my job duties, think I'll reach out to RVi and suggest some updates.

[LadyRVer]

My husband had our 12volt plug in the car hardwired to the battery. It did not have enough voltage for our brake buddy. No problems after that. He measured the voltage in the 12v plug with a little meter.