Brake Controller Operation

[wdk450]

Gang:
I am in the habit of checking my brakes after hitch-up, but sometimes that gets lost for a few moments in all of the manuevering of pulling out of an RV park. Last weekend, after pulling out of the Oroville, Ca. KOA from the Northern California HOG's chapter rally, I remembered to do my brake test as I was going about 15 mph down a long driveway. I squeezed the manual switch on the top of the controller, got a number of about 25 out of the readout, and felt some slowing, but not very hard. I continued on to the street and the stop sign down the street, approaching at about 30 mph, braking with the pedal as normal. Here I saw a braking readout of about 65 and felt more trailer braking force. I thought the manual test switch was supposed to put full braking force on the trailer system. Am I wrong???

 

[Willym]

For the controllers that I have used, the manual lever will give full output only if the gain is set to maximum. Lowering the gain,lowers the output. You normally set the gain using the manual control so that you get maximum braking without wheel lock up. Although many owners of the larger rigs report that wheel lock up is not possible. This doesn't explain your discrepancy though. I wonder of your controller is faulty, or the set up on it has changed. What controller are you using?

 

[jdfishing]

My Prodigy, which is attached to a fully loaded Bighorn 3055 will not lock up the wheels, even when set to the max and fully applied manually. It does seem to adeqately slow the beast under normal breaking conditions, but my wife sure gets excited when I must bring things to a stop quickly. On my old SOB trailer, I could quickly wear a flat spot on the tires by having the brake controller set to high. My mechanic says the Bighorn's brakes are marginal for the size/weight of the trailer.

 

[wdk450]

Thanks guys for the replies. I have the Prodigy controller, also. My gain is set to full. I am wondering if the inertial braking circuitry is involved in this, although I thought the manual braking switch overrode this. The inertial braking involved would make sense with the readings I saw.
I will do some internet investigations and maybe contact Prodigy.

 

[porthole]

Do you have a Prodigy with the "boost" feature and is it set?