I have no idea best place to post this. Since I am a fifth wheeler and this is towing I am going here with this one for people to hammer on.

I had some odd braking experience with my 23 XL and 9000# camper. I was not getting good braking like my old proven 20 yr old Prodigy. I never set up a trailer on that screen thing. At a rest stop waiting on others I went ahead and set it up a camper on the screen thing. The brakes started to work on the camper almost as they did with my old set up. So OK all is well lets go all is well.

Today I was looking at the owners manual at the link below.

https://www.fordservicecontent.com/F...&buildtype=web

The below blurb is stated in Integrated Trailer Brake Controller - Using the Integrated Trailer Brake Controller section.

Note: Select default mode if the trailer has surge brakes, or no brakes at all. The system has no effect on the braking performance of the trailer in either of these cases.

I have seen many of the people with Ford experience here claim that they use default mode or have none trailer defined at all and their brakes works. So with my experience and the statement in the manual, it does look like with magnet brakes a trailer has to be defined in the system.

 

Why? It says to use default mode for surge brakes or no brakes but that doesn’t mean default mode won’t apply electric current to the blue trailer brake wire on the 7 pin trailer plug when the trucks brakes are applied. If a trailer has surge brakes or no brakes, electric current on the blue wire in the 7 pin plug is not going to have any effect on the trailer.

 

Did you not read the part where manual says no power applied with default mode? What does that mean? No I thinks or probable.

Note: Select default mode if the trailer has surge brakes, or no brakes at all. The system has no effect on the braking performance of the trailer in either of these cases

 

No I don’t see where it says no power applied with default mode. It says in default mode the system will have no affect on trailers with no brakes or surge brakes. It will have no effect on these trailers because these trailers don’t have a wire connecting to the blue trailer brake control wire in the 7 pin trailer plug.

 

I did read the section of the manual that you posted and must have missed where it states that “no power is applied in default mode”, could you point that part out to me?
I do see where it clearly states that the default mode will have no effect on the surge brakes or no brakes trailers, but that doesn’t mean that no brake power is being sent to the trailer via the 7 pin. Just that surge brakes don’t use or need electrical power to operate, so any applied power wouldn’t have any effect. And of course, no brakes is no brakes, power applied or not.

 

Default sets the brake controller to 0 from the factory. If you set the brake controller to say 8 when in default mode, that is where it will stay when in default mode. I think when you set up a new trailer it sets it to 6. It wont apply any power to the brakes when set to 0. My 2018 F150, which uses the same system, was 0 when I got it new, but I had added two trailers to the system before even hooking up so it stayed at 0 in default.

 

Why do I have no trailer brakes with default setting? Nothing at all. Set gain to max nothing.

When I go configure a fifth wheel they work.

I hook same camper back up to my GM with the Prodigy and brakes are fine.

So what gives there?

I am not busting into wires on camper to meter it. I know camper brakes and without doing that config thing there is no brakes and gain setting does nothing on my camper. Did a config and brakes work and gain adjustments works. Not as good as Prodigy but gain adjustments work where before defining a trailer there was no brakes.