I know that this isn't the proper forum, but it seems like everyone here does a lot of towing. I'm sure that most of you have electric brakes on your trailers. My question is for anyone with surge brakes. I just put a whole new brake system on my tandem axle boat trailer. The brakes never worked, but I didn't worry about it because most of my traveling was local with an occasional 3 hour cruise to WI. Now heading to FL, I decided I needed to be safe. My question is, how warm should the hubs get? Without brakes, I could drive 200 miles and they wouldn't even be warm. Now, even though I've been pushing them a little hard on 5-10 mile test runs, ie starting and stopping hard repetedly. They get warm. I just took the boat up to the car wash. About 4 miles. On the way home, I got up to 45-50, and hit the brakes semi hard. I did this about 6 times in the 4 miles. When I got home, the hubs were warm. Not hot, just warm. I checked them with my cheap napa infrared thermometer, and they were all around 115*. at 30* outside. I've never had a trailer with brakes before. Is this normal? Am I correct in thinking that if I take a 60 mile local test drive that whatever hub temps I see after that should be the same as if I drove 1400 miles? Sorry this is so long winded and off topic, but like I said, YOU DA MEN!!

 

I moved your thread to the Towing forum.
You have nothing to worry about if you can still touch your brakes and not get burned.

Try this: Go drive your truck around and do some normal stops. Not heavy or panic stops, just normal. 3 or 4 ought to do it.
Now get out and try and touch your front brake rotor and see if you don't get a blister!
This is with normal braking.
Race car brakes operate normally red hot. You can see them glowing at night.

 

Your hubs will get warm with brake usage, the friction that slows you creates heat. I would be concerned if they stayed cool all the time, as that indicated the brakes aren't working. As for the temp, can't say what they would read, but they also should not be too hot to touch, unless you were just draggin them down a big hill or such. You can over heat them, then they really won't work... but I would venture a guess in that they are working just fine. Surge brakes probably won't apply as much as electrics, and certainly not the same as your service brakes on the tow vehicle.

 

Cool, thanks. I'm just concerned because, last year, even though the brakes didn't work, they must have been dragging on one wheel. It actually heated up enough to lock everything up and shear the cotter pin and send the tire flying accross 3 lanes of traffic. Got lucky not to hit anyone.