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To close the loop on this, I noticed driving the truck around Moab that the Prodigy brake controller was behaving strangely. It would randomly display n.c., which it should only do if the lever is pulled when no trailer is connected. Then the fuse blew again, while the motor was running, and resulted in a dead throttle pedal. When I turned it off, it failed to start with the same symptoms.
Anyway, I took the 7-pin receptacle apart and it was wet inside, and the blue brake wire had a little corrosion on it's connection surface. I dried off the connector and cleaned all the terminals, and put it back together. The controller behaved normally, both with and without the trailer, and no more blown fuses. I think the trailer brakes may even work a little better.
Many thanks for all your help today. I really appreciate it!
Sweet that you made it home and were prepared with another fuse
I had a utility trailer that would lose connection when loaded heavy. I thought a wire was getting pinched in the deck somewhere.
Turns out the wires for the magnets were bad and some breaking off. When loaded heavy, the brakes had to work harder, sometimes even showing 'SH' (short detection) on the Prodigy.
Couple points here.
a. Make sure to check your magnets' wiring when checking your brakes and hubs
b. Even during a detected short in the trailer brakes, the Prodigy should be fine and not blow a fuse (at least on my 4Runner, not sure about Superduty)
c. Try a bit with the Prodigy connected, but not the trailer. I suspect vehicle wiring, not so much the trailer?
d. Check your battery voltage at rest and while running (alternator). Low voltage will make the Prodigy freak out in our trucks, too. Ask me how I know It might be just that circuit, not the entire truck, too.
How did you connect your Prodigy- pre-fab plugin harness, or wired in by hand?
Hope this helps!
PS- Please update your first post's title with 'Solved!" or something so the Brotherhood knows you aren't still stuck. Many of us will jump in on a thread like this, even when away doing other things, to help a brother out
Thanks man, and thanks for the reminder! I fixed the title. I probably wasn't clear enough when typing on my phone last night:
The short wasn't in the Prodigy, but was in the 14 year old U-Haul plug. My truck didn't have the factory hitch when I got it (long story), so my wife took it to U-Haul to have the plug installed while I was out of town. I installed the Prodigy right after that, and used the pre-fab harness.
Also, the trailer wasn't connected during any of this, and the Prodigy didn't cause the problem. It did lead me to it, though, by randomly flashing n.c. when driving down the road with no trailer. That's not normal behavior, even for a 14 year old P3.
Lastly, as AllAboutMPG posted above, the fuse that blew was #19, not #18 as I originally mentioned.
Oh, one more thing. Since no thread is complete without pics, here's a pic of my setup, before the trip:
So you actually found your short already? How awesome is that?
Nice rig! You crawlin that yota at Moab? Sounds like fun, but after that I would have an ever harder time keeping the Ex out of "Bigfoot mode" when stuck in traffic behind that little car who refuses to pass or yield the lane
Thanks for the update. Stoked you got home and fixed up
Ding! Ding! Ding!!!! I missed the quoted posts until just now, as I think they were made after I had the truck running, but they will become important...
I wanted to update this thread. The truck was fine for a couple of weeks. Got me home from Moab, drove around some, no issues. I replaced the old 7-pin connector with a new one with soldered connections, and everything worked fine.
Until Thursday. It ran fine in the morning, but when I went to run to the Firestone store after work, the dash lights were off and it mimicked the symptoms at the start of this thread, except that the brake controller was behaving normally. In burning up my spare fuses, I noticed that it worked fine with a new fuse, until I shifted out of park, when all the gauges would go to zero and the throttle would become unresponsive. SES light came on, and Torque showed random codes. Oh, and I could smell smoke when the fuses blew...
Even though I'd missed the posts above, I've been on here long enough to know exactly what the problem was. My wonderful daughter lives close by, so she fetched me, took me home to get my tools and some electrical tape, and back we went to the Firestone store. Sure enough, the OD cancel wire was chaffed through. I had it running in 5 minutes, and taped it up proper when I got home.
Thanks to a mis-spent middle age reading about truck problems I don't necessarily have (or at least didn't) I was able to turn a "stuck" into a "drive home" pretty easily. Thanks guys!!!!
Had I reread this thread when I got home, I'd have seen the quoted posts and proactively fixed the issue, so that's a lesson learned. I'm still not sure if I had two issues - a shorted (and wet) 7-pin connector, and a chaffed wire in the column - or just the latter problem that magically fixed itself while I was working on the former. I don't suppose it matters.
I really appreciate the help of this forum, both in responding to this problem, and to the education you've given me over the years. Without you guys, I'd have been on the end of hook twice in three weeks.
It might be just that circuit, not the entire truck, too.
