Hi All,

I've just purchased a new 06' Ford F250 Lariat with a PSD and tow command. We pulled the trailer with it for the first time this past weekend.

Here's my issue. When hooking the trailer up, the green bars come on showing the gain and that the trailer is hooked up. In a few seconds, the display starts flashing and the message center says "Trailer Disconnected." During the same time we receive the disconnect message, the running lights, turn signals, stop lights are all working fine. Also the trailer brakes work fine using the manual slider on the tow command unit. Then all the sudden while towing, the controller may start working perfectly, then go back to a flashing display.

When we got back from our trip, I hooked our trailer up to my previous tow vehicle, my F150, and everything is normal with the trailer, lights, turn signals, brakes, and brake controller.

I cleaned the connectors on my trailer's pigtail thinking the trailer wasn't making a good connection, but that didn't help.

I know what's going to happen, Ford is going to point their finger at the trailer and my RV dealer is going to says it's the truck's fault.

Any ideas on how to proceed?

Thank you in advance for your help.

Chuck

 

Have you proven that the ground to the trailer isn't through the ball? Apparently the new controller is more sensitive to that kind of thing than the old ones...

 

Hi BareBones

No, but thanks for the tip. I'll run a separate ground wire and see if that makes a difference.

Chuck

 

Hey bearncat, If you found out what it is, please post. I am having the same issue with an 04 F-150 and a Prodigy controller. It works fine one second then reads short and overload the next, then it is fine again. It makes me a little uneasy about not having everything perfect. Thanks in advance!

 

That sure sounds like a ground problem to me. If the ground is not buggered, then I'd take a good look at the trailer plug and make sure you don't have loose screws on the terminal block inside. A loose connection in there could do the trick, too. Barring a bunch of frame rust or a loose bolt on your truck side ground, my bet's on a problem with the ground wire somewhere between the trailer plug and where they attached it to the trailer frame.

 

Hi All,

Thanks for thge replies. I'm going to replace the pigtail this weekend and trace down the trailer's ground to make sure all looks like it should.

Chuck

 

You never mentioned what the age was of the trailer...I had a ground problem that I didn't recognise as a ground problem a while back...the landing gear swict on my fiver quit working. Bought a new switch...same problem. Found out that throwing parts at a problem doesn't always work. Ohmmeter told me ground and hot wires were ok until I removed all the wiring from the landing gear system and ohmed them all out. No ground! It was getting an electrical ground, but not a good enough ground to pass the amperage required for the circuit. I installed a new ground wire from the system (cut the old one out) before rewiring circuit ground directly to battery ground. I lost wire inside of underside of trailer when trying to find out why original ground was broken/lost. With wiring, sometimes is much faster in running new wire than trying to repair old....same for automobiles.

 

Hi BPof MD,

I'm going to spend some time next weekend tracing and checking the wiring of the trailer. The trailer is a 2005 model. Thank you for the advice and the tips.

Chuck

 

Check the wiring all the way to the magnets. Sometimes a wire will get frayed inside the drums.

I towed a borrowed utility trailer this weekend and got several "check trailer brakes" beeps. By looking at the mess of wires I could only imagine what the problem was...

 

Thank you.

 

It's in the trailer brakes. I know because I've speent about 6 months tracking mine down. That trailer disconnect beep can get annoying . I went from the plug all the way to the axles replacing all the wires and found out it was the magnets inside the drum. Try disconnecting one wheel at a time starting at the front. Disconnect the two wires going to each wheel untill it stops giving the error meessage. Mine was the right rear wheel on a tri-axel trailer. The system needs atleast one wheel hooked up to work or it won't sense the magnet and won't know there is a trailer hooked up. Now mine is just hooked up to the two front axles with the last one disconnected .(havn't had time to fix it but the error message doesn't come on anymore)