Hi MPD56
Thank you for your informative feedback,it made alot of sense.
Just a little bit of information regarding who you are talking to i live in Australia and Ford trucks are very uncommon,hence i know very little about these great trucks but trying to learn as much as i can by listening to people like you who sounds like has great knowledge of these vehicles.
Firstly i hooked up my van and towed it down the street at around 20klms per hour the gain setting was on 6 lent down and activated the slide and i could not stop the truck,i stopped and re set the gain to 10 and repeated the same test it did slow down but didnt give me great confidence of the vehicle stopping at a higher speed.
I had a Ford F 250 that i towed with a Hayman Reece controller and it would lock the vans wheels up if i had set it too high.
So are you saying that the TBC will operate more efficiently at a higher speed.
Cheers
Baker51

 

the ford TBC is controlled as part of a system on the truck. Its output will vary as you step on the brakes.

Once the trailer is hooked up then it also becomes part of the system. Your trailer will then have (as part of the system) antilock brakes.

So the trailer will not lockup when hooked to a modern integrated TBC.

If you measure 2 volts when stepping on the pedal then you are seeing the result of this. If you have mashed much harder then you might get a little more than 2 volts but keep in mind you are not moving and the truck knows this.

If you take it out for a spin (both truck and trailer) and then just use the slider to stop them both it should work. If it does then your tbc is probably working right.

 

Put a compass by the trailer wheels and hit the brakes, if there's current going to the magnets the compass needle will point at it.

 

I have a 2012 F250 with an integrated brake controller. When I hooked up the 5th wheel I got power to the lights but the 250 did not read the trailer. I took the 250 to the dealer and they checked the plug on the truck and it read their module plug.
Took the truck home and it still didn't read the 5th wheel as being hooked up. Any ideas or suggestions?
Thanks,

 

When you say it didn't read, do you mean when you went into the menu for the trailer it says disconnected or no trailer present?

Have you checked the relays?

 

Welcome aboard.

The way the truck recognizes there is a trailer attached is through the trailer braking system. If there are problems with the trailer plug wiring or the trailer brake circuit, then the IBC won't recognize there is a trailer there.

Hope you get it figured out.

 

Not quite true, in fact, not true at all. In order to have ALB on any wheel, it has to have a wheel speed sensor and individual braking control. That's the only way to detect and control a lock-up. ALB can only modify the wheels with individual braking force control, i.e. the wheels on the truck. Wheel speed sensors on 4 wheels of the trailer would be a lotta wires with very low level signals subject to EMI to run through a trailer connector. Having been in a car with a defective wheel speed sensor, I can say that is not a pleasant experience to have. Imagine traction control trying handle the throttle and transmission when it thinks one wheel is locked up. If, however, traction control or ABS reduces the braking, or trailer sway kicks in, it may modulate the braking current to try to keep the trailer behind the vehicle, assuming the vehicle is still going forward, and somehow, I even doubt that unless it uses a decelerometer in the controller, because trailer sway is often controlled by reducing throttle/speed. I've never had an issue with trailer sway, but I've never loaded a trailer wrong, either. Not yet, anyway. I'm thinking that the OEM controllers are little more than Integral Gain with timer. If the vehicle is still in motion but not in a forward direction (sliding on ice or all 4 wheels hydroplaning), the driver becomes insignificant and is along for the rather bumpy upcoming ride. There may be something to detect sideways motion for the vehicle and try to recover with ABS and TC, but it isn't a theory I want to test.

Adjusting the brakes on the trailer and making sure they're as closely tuned to each other as possible, and making sure that there's no grease/oil on the surface where the magnets drag, and the same for the shoes/drums is the only adjustment that can be made on the trailer. Taking resistance/impedance readings of the magnets on the trailer only helps if you know what they were to start with, and you have a capable enough instrument to do so. For OEM controllers, make sure that applying the brake at stand-still eventually ramps the voltage up to battery voltage at the trailer connector, and that you read continuity to some extent in the brake circuits. You COULD disconnect the brake wiring at each wheel, check the coil resistance there, and then some simple calculations will let you verify the impedance you see at the plug. This depends on how the brakes are connected (Series/parallel/combination). The signal to the brake magnets is pulse-width modulated to prevent burning up the magnets, and normally, they will hum with a pretty high pitch. If there's any noise nearby, or you have hearing loss in the upper ranges, you may not hear it. I have tinnitus, and can hear it on my trailer, sometimes, with my head inside the fender well.

I put a controller in my 2014, and like so many others, my IPC lies and says there's no trailer there. Whether one is connected or not, and regardless of what I set the Towing Options for in the settings on the IPC, it says No Trailer Present. It lies because there is very much a 14 ft 7000 lb rated trailer back there sometimes with a Kubota LX-2610SU (nearly 4000 pounds) sitting on it. I would completely understand the problem if it was a single axle trailer with no brakes. For a while now, DOT has required brakes on all tandem axle trailers. I completely overhauled the wiring on the trailer when I bought it because there was some wear and tear on wiring that was nearly 40 years old. All new wire, all new connectors, but same ol' magnets and brake parts. Considering you can configure trailers with no brakes, I would think that would make the "No Trailer Present" go away, or that argues that it is not sensing trailer brakes at all. It does not remove the alarm (I tried that option), so now I wonder if it's checking the brake light circuits. Would having LED lights cause the warning in that case? Incandescent lights have a much higher (more easily detected) current draw. The towing package firmware is intended to help track trailer maintenance, so if it's claiming there's no trailer there, well, that's not quite helpful. I have a little heartburn thinking the trailer detector wouldn't work with LED lights, considering some 2014 option packages included LED lights, and I'm pretty sure the flasher relay in mine doesn't care what kind is back there. Since the tail and trailer light circuits are isolated, though, it's quite possible the flasher relay is still old-school bimetal thermal acting hardware which gets stupid when there's a blown bulb on the truck. I've not really checked and have never had a blown tail lamp or turn signal. I'm still in a learning curve on the 2014.

Brake Maintenance/overhaul is the next project on the trailer, and I may get some old incandescent tail lamps (if I can find some) to figure out if that makes the trailer detector happier. What I have found out, is that the TBC is actually 'working', with what appears to be integral gain and timer control. The longer you hold the brake on, or the higher the gain, the faster the output ramps up, which is the whole purpose of the gain setting, to prevent dragging the trailer tires every time you stop, What would be really nice would be a way to monitor reference to and the output of the TBC with ForScan while driving. Unfortunately, the 2011-2014 models don't seem to have a very well documented configuration spreadsheet, at least not for the 2014. Some things, yes, very well done, others, not so much. There's BOUND to be something we're all missing about Trailer brakes in our little model year club. The differences in 11, 12, and 13 tell me heaps changed, so I can't help believe more did in 14 leading up to Sync 1.1. I have one screen in my IP that indicates nothing but Transmission Temperature. That's about as useful as a screen door on a submarine with a gauge for the same directly above the screen. Let me program a graph of throttle position and load on that if the screen is going to be useful while driving. Back to the brake controller, if I make a long slow stop approaching a traffic light with my trailer empty, even with the gain set to 2.0, it will typically lock up the left front wheel on the trailer, sometimes both front wheels. This usually catches folks in the adjacent lanes unawares and the look of sheer panic on their faces is somewhat amusing to me, but flat spotting my trailer tires is not. Only the front axle has brakes, and to me, the jury's still out if the brakes are on the right axle. I've yet to get it to lock up with a loaded trailer, though, even with gain set to 10, which could indicate some magnet/controller compatibility issues, or shoe adjustment issues. This is beginning to look like I need to do some brake maintenance on the trailer, and maybe replace the brake magnets with newer components so that the TBC will detect the magnets (if that's how it's actually done) and be happy and tell the IPC that there really are brakes on the trailer. If I set "No Trailer Attached" in the towing menus, then it should disable the alarm for no trailer. It does not. I'm also of the mindset the braked axle should be the rear axle which tends to carry most of the trailer weight when it's empty and braking lifts the tongue. I could be wrong, and have been before, but the lifting motion when braking on the front wheels of a trailer says to me the back ones should be the braked ones. It isn't much, and not enough to need an adjustable height hitch, but the trailer is just a little high in the front end when empty. Loading forward of the axle (for stability) tends to correct this with increased tongue weight.

I have found parameters to enable Gain Control, and one other setting that seems to have no effect whatsoever. Can't remember the name of the other setting, though. The second one changes back after I set it, so I'm thinking that the IPC is turning something back off that says I have the TBC installed, albeit, the bias/gain display works perfectly when I squeeze the *****. My truck came with a towing package, EXCEPT for the TBC, and all TBC features were set to off when I looked the first time. Tranny cooler, harness, connector, Class III hitch, and even had the fuse/relay in the options package in the glove box. I ordered a controller that was for 2011-2014 trucks, which took all of 10 minutes to install, and the first time I turned the key on, it started bickering about no trailer present. It took longer to find the connector than it did to put in the controller and put the panels back on. When I reconnected the battery and turned on the ignition and connected with FORScan I didn't have to change a thing. I looked at the TBC codes before and after installing the TBC, and some had changed automatically just because there was now a TBC present. This is a bit of a head scratcher, and indicates the 2014 system can 'learn' based on what hardware gets plugged in. I cleared the DTC's triggered by the mismatch in the factory config and adding the TBC, and none have popped back up. It STILL claims No Trailer Present, which I'm assuming is a combination of the TBC Gain being enabled and an apparent lack of a feedback signal from the TBC, or perhaps LED tail lights instead of incandescent. I can't get a straight answer on that. For now, the OK button fixes that until the next time I start the truck. Annoying, but not a deal breaker, and maybe something I can contribute to later. I'm old enough that the 2014 may be the last truck I buy.

Did 2014 have a different TBC and ACM/IPC firmware from 11-13? Sync was changing rapidly at this time (May 2014 build date on a 2014 model) preparing for the 2015 model year with Sync1.1 and Sync 3. What happened to SYNC2?.

Too many questions, not enough answers.