My 2005 had the towing package installed as a dealer option. I have the 7 pin connector on the rear bumper and the blue connector for the brake controller.

I am getting no brake voltage at the rear bumper when I mash the red button on my Brakesmart controller. I traced the wiring checking for voltage at the back of the Brakesmart, at the truck side of the blue connector and followed the wiring into the engine compartment.

The wiring appears to go down a harness on the rear side of the driver's fender well and mate with a connector at the frame rail for the rear harness.

I pulled this connector apart and set the Brakesmart to output 1.3 V (rubberband and a halls cough drop). Probing the connector seems to indicate that the signal comes down in the left most set of pins, center pin. I reset the voltage to zero and confirmed it on the pin, set the voltage to 6.33 and again confirmed it on the pin.

Here's the gotcha ...

There is no wire in the mating socket, none at all. Is this common? Did my dealer slap a hitch on my truck and not upgrade the rear harness??

Anyone else had this issue?

Ryan

 

Sounds like you've done most of the difficult troubleshooting. If it were me, I'd run a wire of the same gauge or bigger from the last place you find voltage back to the 7-pin connector at the bumper.

This is water under the bridge and probably something you don't want to hear but NEVER buy a dealer add-on.

 

Mine had the dealer installed package and the exact same thing happened. There should be a seperate blue wire they had to feed back into the cab. It is part of the harness they use. Mine was just tied up to some other wires up under the dash. You should just have to connect that wire to the feed wire from your controller. I had to do mine. I bought the truck used with 4000 miles on it and the original owner never used a controller. Take a good look up under there for a blue wire not connected to anything and let us know what ya find.

 

Sure enough, **** blue wire coiled up and tie wrapped off under there. I'm thinking about pulling it back out of the cab and splicing it under the truck. Keep my Brakesmart installation nice and clean.

Also that blue wire looks like a 14 ga, the wire in the harness under the truck (factory side before it dead ends) also looked a bit small. I'm running 3 axles, brakes on each. Seems like I should up the size to 10 ga all the way even though it would be a pain and not as clean.

Thoughts?

Ryan

 

If you were running one axle, i'd go with the 14awg. But you're running three axles, I'd run the 10awg or even 8awg. I'd really hate to see you under size it & lose trailer brakes down a grade, when you really need them!

HTH

Tony

 

Yep, I had to wire mine as well. I had to mount the hitch, run the wire harness from the plug on the bumper up to the front of the truck to the controller and battery and tap into the reverse lights at the tail light. Then, I had to wire the controller using some of the wires on the connector under the dash and some I had to bring into the cab to wire into the controller direct. It's clean and works good when done but is a little time consuming to get it all right. When I bought the harness and controller at the RV dealer I remember thinking, wow they finally put some thought into this stuff, and not being able to take advantage of the plug and play features. Had to cut the connector off of the controller and use butt connectors to finish the job. Oh well, it has been working for two years now.

 

Seems to me I read somewhere that you should not run anything smaller than 12 gauge wire with a brakesmart. I don't remember if it was in my paperwork or on their web site.

 

Got her all fixed up tonight, disassembled the connector to the brakesmart (the harness brakesmart supplied) and made a nice clean connection for a new blue brake wire. Hooked up to the trailer and tested all the brakes.

Will be nice to be able to stop without my 30 foot car hauler trying to shove me into the next car.

Story from my trip from FL to SC and back to get my 30' Pace Shadow GT enclosed car trailer. Headed back with no brakes, thought I had a problem with the trailer. Heading down I-95 in SC some idiot with a 1/2 ton pickup has a bunch of wicker furniture in cardboard boxes just tossed in the back. No rope, no tie downs, no rachet straps, not a thing holding them in.

Figured all that out later, when I first see this guy I round a bend and he's a good ways up ahead backup up to a box that has fallen out and is laying 30% into my lane (right lane). I hit the brakes, good and firm the ABS pulsing just slightly. I check the left lane, no way I'm getting in. The right side of his truck is a steep embankment. I'm making for the box! I tell my Dad we're not gonna stop, "We're gonna hit it." I managed to get my 2500 down to about 5 MPH when I struck the box.

It was all in slow motion as I rolled over his box. Figured it scuffed my bumper (later confirmed) so I just let my rear axle and all three trailer axles coast right over the same box...

20 minutes down the road the same idiot passes me doing about 80. Wicker crap stacked haphazardly in the back. One of the chairs was out of the box and on top of the heap, looked to be a little worse for wear!

Ryan

 

Reidry, don't forget to make sure your trailer brakes are adjusted up and with three axles you have to calibrate the brakesmart. While sitting in park, foot off the brake peddle, hold the red manual button all the way down (applied) for about 2 or 3 seconds until the display reads calibration done.

 

Roger that! Ran through the calibration last night, works great! I've got to service the axles and check the brakes, it's on my to do list.

Ryan

 

My last 2 3rd gen CTD's seemed to be a bit weak in the trailer brake area....did you go to a larger brake supply wire? and did it help? I have always kinda suspect the wire size but figured they knew what they were doing... ......I know Dexter recomends a #10....Thanks!

 

I didn't go with larger wire, just used the blue one dealer installed. I'm going to measure the voltage drop in the trailer splice box and if I find it unacceptably low I'll upgrade the wire.

3 axles, brakes are pulling 12 - 13 A total.

Ryan

 

Dumbest thing I've ever seen in my entire life . . . I'm walking around this truck at the dealership, getting ready to make the deal on my truck. Everything is looking good. I like everything about the truck. Didn't even occur to me to look and see if there was a hitch on the truck. Just as I'm getting ready to close the deal on the truck I walk around the back, look at the bumper and it strikes me that there's no hitch on this 3/4 diesel truck?! What the he!!? Who buys a 2500 4x4 diesel without a hitch? Apparently the truck didn't come stock with the hitch and wired for the electronic brake controller (which I really don't need . . . right now). I was using an employee discount so there wasn't really a lot of haggling on price but told them that I wasn't driving that truck off the lot without a hitch and I wasn't going to shell out any of my money for the hitch so if they wanted to sell the truck that night they were going to have to put a hitch on it. They ended up agreeing and I got the truck. All of that to get to this question - If it didn't come with trailer tow group, what else would I be missing besides the hitch?

Thomas

 

Reidry, I bumped my initial brake constant up to 35 today. That made a huge difference in the feel and the overall braking.

 

Price_Dog,

If your dealer only bolted on the receiver itself you'll be missing their little add on harness. It plugs into the flat 4 pin connector, has a 10 pin connector that mates to the back of the truck side Mopar 7 pin RV plug and has 3 wires for ground, +12V, and electric brake. They run the 3 wire section of the harness in wireloom on top of the driver's side frame rail and up the firewall. The electric brake line gets poked through with the hood release cable, the ground should go to the negative side of the battery and the +12 goes into a fuse holder that they zip tie up to something just aft of the driver's side battery and then to the positive side of the battery.

If I had a choice when buying my '05 I would have purchased a truck with the factory towing package. It was the end of the year, December '05 and it was the last Laramie 2WD in the state.

Just had J&J running boards installed this week, getting a fold-a-cover and probably upgrading the hitch to a Putnam XDR class V.

Really enjoying my 3rd Gen Dodge!

Ryan