No need to get testy. I too have towed a lot of miles and on this particular truck I didn’t immediately notice the trailer brakes were out and it wasn’t inattention or lack of appreciation for mass. I was towing 6500 lbs on the flats and I thought the brakes were just misadjusted until I had to make a hard stop at speed. Then I knew. Going downhill for significant distances isn’t a particularly good test of brake performance either—your and Antimatter’s stated scenarios— because there are a lot of ways to control a truck/trailer that don’t rely on heavy use of the brakes. In fact, it’s good practice not to rely exclusively on brakes going down a mountain to avoid overheating heating them and degrading their performance. But I’m sure you alreday knew that. So, it’s entirely possible under these downhill conditions not to know the trailer brakes were completely out, particularly if using other speed mitigating measures.
I know that it isn’t a loose connection. It’s wonky programming. When my brakes were’t working the way they were supposed to, for some reason I tried something completely unconventional—I turned on the headlights. The brakes immediately locked up. Full lock up. Turned off the headlights, brakes completely released. Fortunately, I was only creeping along at the time so it wasn’t dangerous. But it could have been disastrous at highway speed.
although I don't understand how that leads to the programming switching function sometime during a journey? But scary, considering the truck would usually have headlights set to automatically turn on - which if it led to lock up trailer at a bad moment would be even worse than the scenario of unexpectedly having no trailer brakes ?
I can’t explain it either. I had visions of going into a tunnel and. . . .I forgot your headlight comment - and you're right, that points to a controller that's just way too smart for its own good
The engine in my powerboost turns off all the time when I'm driving. Could that be the issue?JEB, other people seem to have had success with this also, and it makes sense from perspective of truck electronics somehow needing a clean slate to calibrate the brake output ... although other vehicles seen to manage just fine! However it doesn't account for the trailer brakes disappearing randomly some time after the journey has started
I'd still be interested if anyone else with this issue has an opinion on how well the 4-pin adapter plug supplied with the truck fits the truck receptacle - good? bad? compared with other trucks?
Right. I did some research and it appears that this issue has been occurring for years.
Interesting. But I’m curious as to whether this actually did anything. I’m presuming you didn’t put the copper grease on the ground and brake pin while the truck was running. So it begs the question: Did the grease work? Or did you fix the problem because you turned off the ignition, opened and closed the door and gave the truck time to power down fully while you applied it?
