Supplemental Brake... Necessity or Preference
We seem to have a good number of discussions on the issue of the need for supplemental brakes... Unfortunately many of the discussions are not very productive in terms of giving those who have an open...
Forum Discussion
egmurray wrote:
Need to replace my brake buddy... looking at a new Patriot?
Is this a good, reliable unit. My brake buddy let me down twice. The brake buddy doesn't seen to like cold weather; I have no choice when I leave for the south.
We tow a 2007 Mazda3 behind our Sprinter based Solera, and use the Patriot. So far I have been very pleased with the operation. Price includes a remote control to be used in the Motorhome to control the sensitivity of the Patriot, and status indicators telling whether it is activated, if it currently has brakes applied, or if Patriot has been disabled due to a fault. It has functioned well. Only issue we have had is that it must be charged prior to first use, because it has an internal battery as a backup if the toad battery drops below a critical point. We also discovered that if stopped on a downhill slope and holding foot on brake for extended period, the Patriot will display "time out" fault and must be turned off and on, and reinitialized. To avoid this, I have begun to turn the gain to "0" with the remote during this time - after having come to a stop (this effectively puts unit in standby) and resetting gain after resuming motion. This seems to have worked. I am assuming if the unit is not used for extended periods (like over the winter), that it would need to be recharged again. I have also installed a "Toad Brake" system to keep toad battery charged, hopefully avoiding any battery issues.
