Originally Posted by
hillbillyk
I am working on a 2005 kaufman 20 foot equipment trailer, and pulling it with a 2005 f-350 with the built in brake controller. I am baffled at why I can't get this thing to work right. When I got the trailer the brakes were very weak. I pulled the wheels and found that it was greased so much that it pushed oil from the grease past the inner seals and coated the magnet face and brake drum faces, but the shoes were dry. I cleaned the oil with brake clean, cleaned the magnets, and adjusted the brakes. They work now but are very weak, my test is with an empty trailer it should drag the brakes, at least on my gravel driveway but it will barely stop the truck at idle.
The next step was to replace the magnets, they seemed to have grease in them and it seeped out again, so they were replaced, and it seemed the same, very weak brakes.
Third step was to adjust the brakes very tight, had a good amount of drag on them. Did'nt seem to help. I took it on a 20 mile and back drive to deliver a truck and they got super hot, could not really touch the hubs.
Fourth step was pulling the drums again and sanding the brake shoes, mabye they were glazed over. Also backed off the brakes so they just have a slight drag. Still very weak, but delivered a second truck to the same place, this time the front axle hubs were hot but you could touch them, could not put your hand on either rear hub. Also used a temp. gun, rears were 200 degrees. They were hot after the first 20 miles, not much braking. Then let them cool, drove home and turned the brake controller to 0, this is when I got the 200 reading. Also when I pulled the dust cover on the rear it popped off and shot super hot grease at me, and now I have a little play in the bearings.
I am at a loss now as to what to do, and mabye the bearings are fried to? I get 10 volts to the brakes with the ford controller maxed out to 10, is this what I should get? Also what is the correct procedure to torque the bearings, I just snug them down till I feel a drag on the wheel, then back off mabye a quarter turn and bend the locking tab down.
Sorry for the long post, but I'm about to use the trailer for target practice, tired of dropping money on it. Any help is greatly appreciated.
Just to get everyone on the same page, when you are moving and you activate the brake controller manually, you can not feel the trailer brakes working?
Since you have done a great of work on the brakes already, one of the first things I encourage folks to do,
with the trailer connected and the seven pin out of the truck is to pull the break-away switch on the trailer, with a good battery on the trailer. When you do that, the trailer brakes will be fully engaged. Can you pull the trailer when you have the break-away pulled? The trailer should be stuck fast!
Since the trailer brake controller has an accelerameter, it works the trailer brakes in proportion to how hard the truck is stopping and it is very difficult to detect its action, even when it is working fine.
Now I note you have only 10 volts to the trailer from the seven-pin, so my thought would be the problem is more likely a grounding problem between the truck and trailer, which is very common problem. I would expect to see a higher reading. Doing as I suggest above takes the trailer out of the equation as you are activating the trailer brakes using only the trailer system.
If the trailer brakes are working, with the break-away reset and the seven-pin plugged back in, now take a jumper cable and make a good connection between the trailer frame and the truck frame. How do the brakes work when you do that?
Steve