Blue Ox Patriot Radio Frequency Portable Braking System Operation Settings

Question:

I have a 2015 Jeep Grand Cherokee. With a setting of 5 on both units the system only seems to operate rather infrequently. My son phoned in to your tech dept. and was told that the system would only operate when there was a certain amount of inertia. Please clarify this issue.

asked by: Jon F

Expert Reply:

With your Blue Ox Patriot Radio Frequency Portable Braking System # BLU37TR, there are different settings available to you. There are two different settings that often get confused when looking at the braking pressure to be applied. I reached out to my contact at Blue Ox, and he suggested a setting of 4 for your 2015 Jeep Grand Cherokee. This is actually the gain setting which is the length the arm will extend and retract to engage the pedal in your Jeep. You don't want to have everything dialed all the way up on your system because it will wear out the brakes in your vehicle faster than necessary.

There are different sensitivity settings that are available to you that your owners manual can walk you though. They are represented by different bars on the unit. You can adjust this sensitivity without needing to adjust the gain past 4 that the Blue Ox Tech recommended.

The inertia needed for their sensor to kick involves many different factors. If you are traveling downhill, the sensor will recognize the added inertia and will use the brakes more often. If you are going 65 mph on the highway and need to quickly slow to 45 for a construction zone, the added inertia will kick the brakes into action. For normal braking that is slow and controlled the sensor won't kick the brakes of your Jeep into action because it isn't needed. Also for most stopping under 25 mph the patriot won't kick in because it isn't necessary. This feature is to protect your Jeep, but you can adjust the sensitivity so that they kick in more often or less often within their manufacturers parameters.

expert reply by: Jason S