I have a 36 ft Exiss Gooseneck that when plugged in causes the F350 brakes to be inoperable. The trailer has to stop this freight train. Anyone have any ideas on what could cause this???? The truck by itself stops on a dime. Thanks.

 

There should be absolutely nothing in the trailer wiring that kills the truck brakes. Have you got the integrated brake controller? Have you played around with the manual brake lever for the trailer and the pedal to see if the truck brakes ever come online? Pulled the fuse for the trailer brakes to disable the wiring to see what difference that makes? Are you sure the truck brakes have failed? Maybe the truck brakes still work, but the trailer brakes do not and the 36' trailer is just pushing you around.

Welcome to FTE.

 

Thanks, that's what I thought too. This truck has the integrated brake controller and it works on the trailer. I can manually stop it with the controller. When applying the truck brakes the stopping power is the same. No truck brakes.

 

The integrated brake controller has a sensor on the master cylinder that reads the pressure that is being applied to the truck's brakes. The harder you press the truck's brakes, the harder the ibc pressures the trailer's brakes.

I.e., pressure is applied to the trailer's (electric) brakes in proportion to the hydraulic pressure in the truck's braking system.

I'm guessing one of two things. (1) The application of the truck's brakes is smoothly coordinated with the trailer to the point that its not obvious, or (2) keep in mind that at least in 2005 the ibc would not apply trailer brakes until speed exceeded 15 mph. So if you are testing the ibc by driving along at ten mph you wouldn't get application of both sets of brakes, just the ones in the truck.


Having said that, this weird method of operation was fixed sometime after 2005, but I suppose its possible that you could have one of the older ibc's, like I do.