gorms

Well we left with the camper on Thursday, about 30min away from the house I realized we had no trailer brakes. All fuses are good, swapped trailer relay with starting relay, lights on controller worked (cheap Journey HD time delay type) but it flashed OC (open connection) when I applied the lever. Checked all wiring on trailer, all seems fine and I can ohm out the solenoids on all 4 wheels with no shorts. All lights on trailer work, and all brake lights come on when the manual lever on brake controller is applied. I even bought another controller once we got up here (fun ride through the white mountains of NH with no trailer brakes, good thing I just did the truck brakes over!) and still no workie.

I do have a meter and I'm not getting power to the bottom left pin of the truck side 7 blade (flat RV type) when brakes are applied with controller. I have done work to the truck since the last trip a few months ago, like put a flatbed on it/painted frame etc. so there is a chance I did something to it in the mean time, will have to check that out today. We are leaving tomorrow and there is a 12% over 3 miles down grade on the way back I'm not looking forward to without trailer brakes.

Thanks for any help, I could not read any voltage to the coil of the trailer relay, not sure what it does as I have no diagrams, only have constant power to the top pin (common I'd guess) so I might try just running a wire down from the controller right to the bottom left pin on the truck side.

Thanks again.

Tallguy67

Forms, have you tried the cheap stuff like checking for brake electricity on the wiring side of the truck plug for the brakes (I know you tested the plug blade side) and more importantly have you tested where your brake controller injects te electricity into the wiring harness? Hopefully it is just a broken wire.

Dieselbuilder

worst case if you have brake power coming from the controler just run a wire from that to the back of the truck plug and fix it right when you get home

gorms

Well turns out the wire rotted off the back of the plug. Weird thing is bottom left of the truck plug is ground, bottom right is + to brakes? I thought it was the other way around. I also dug up some splices in the wire loom right behind the reciever, it's been played with before. I'll just hard wire it to get home. Thanks guys!

Tallguy67

Gorms - glad you found your problem. I went to tow for first time of year a little over a month ago. Had weird stuff going on with lights and then smoke out of plug on truck. I replaced the truck plug ($10) and about 1 hour of labor. Most of the wires were corroded, brittle and black. I cut all the wires back a few inches until I got to good copper and attached the new plug, all is good. The only problem was that none of the wire colors were correct. For instance, I had to put a brown wire where plug wanted a red wire. Other than that, it was a well spent hour of my time.