This story begins after i offered to haul my friend's Aerostar van for him. He lives at the top of an exceptionally steep gravel hill.
We drove the van on your trailer, strapped it down tight, set the weight distributing hitch yet i headed down from the side hill. It was all going well until I hit the brakes.
Basically there was none. Only the fronts on the Suburban were locking. I pushed the important red button on our handmade trailer brake controller giving them the full 13.7 volts but nothing. Well dirt cheap. I had been still going down way a lot faster then I wanted to!
The trailer brakes need to have locked up solid whenever the red button is pushed making everything at the very least slide straight - as an alternative the trailer working to pass the Suburban. Talk about the cart until the horse!
How load was pushing around that Suburban, I have been really glad I'd not made their attempts to tow with little Jeep Cherokee.
Once that job was finished I backed the trailer into the shop to chose my first investigate those trailer brakes. We have owned this trailer for nearly twenty-five years and I've never seen contained in the brake drums there. I suppose it was about time.
My inspection of the earliest drum showed me a little about how precisely electric trailer brakes work. There exists an electromagnet that pulls the actual around the drum. The friction of your magnet on the drum moves one shoe that in turn moves the other shoe which has a cam action.
Pretty simple. I hasn't see anything wrong. The shoes looked fine, the drum was fine apart from some scoring where the magnet rubbed. I put power to your magnet and it appeared to pull OK. But, the friction of a typical magnet contrary to the drum was obviously not enough to operate the shoes.
I could not find out the way in which a magnet could go bad, but remember that this is what it seemed. Opt for some Internet research.
I ultimately found a site nevertheless magnet failure was common on electric trailer brakes. So I went shopping for trailer brake magnets. Most places wanted a bit more for the magnet than I could buy the whole backing assembly for. To have one with a local parts store I would personally pay in excess of I can buy two backing assemblies for. And new magnets are within the backing plate assemblies.
Just once i was ready to quit and order new assemblies, I stumbled upon Auto Safety House. May also dip into the stash work only with their web site, however they have great prices.
I stumbled upon a few new drums on e bay and that i was the one individual who bid so I got both for the cost price of 1. Probably the look forward to Danny - my UPS driver - to convey each of them me. Naturally the drums and magnets arrived on different days so he got to visit with dog Smash twice.
Upon closer inspection of the trailer brakes, I found that I still didn't discover how they worked. Something just have not look right concerning the way the cams worked. It sure appeared like they'd be stronger in reverse. And this trailer has always been difficult to back up while the brakes hard work right.
An instant consider the Dexter Brakes internet page confirmed my suspicions. The rear axle given on my trailer was installed backwards.
I began the bearings hasn't really care in the event that they were spinning backwards, therefore i elected to simply swap the brake assemblies left to right.
Having them off made installing the magnets and routing the not so little green wires somewhat easier. I have found that lots of lubricant made getting them through the grommets a great deal easier.
Dexter Magnets are identified by the wire color. A suitable one for my 3500lb axles is the green wire. Nice they have not changed that in 25 years.
The magnets are held in by spring clips which can be pretty hard to obtain off. I used a compact screwdriver along with a pry bar and bent them slightly to obtain them off. The new magnets had new clips anyway.
I loaded the latest bearings with axle grease and installed the new brake drums. They aren't Dexter brand but the fit tolerable.
Author Resource:-
The wiring is was pretty electric trailer brakes not difficult to reconnect since there is no polarity on the magnets. Just connect one wire to the brake controller power lead and maybe to ground. Dexter recommends managing a separate ground wire but I just grounded it to the trailer frame the same as it was in fact electric trailer brakes done before.
![[Valid RSS feed]](http://article2008.com/images/feed-icon.png "XML Feed For RSS"){kind=icon}
![[Valid RSS feed]](http://article2008.com/images/icon_Rss.png "XML Feed For RSS"){kind=icon}
Category Rss Feed
Print This Article
Add To Favorites