Troubleshoot Trailer Brakes and Brake Controller  

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Expert Reply:

What needs to be done first is discover if the problem is on the tow vehicle or the trailer brake side. The easiest way to do this is connect your travel trailer to friends vehicle with their brake controller to discover if travel trailer reacts the same. If it does, you need to address your campers brakes. If everything brakes as it should then you have issues with your brake controller. Swap the brake controllers between vehicles also to discover if your 2007 Hyundai Santa Fe will function correctly with a known good brake controller.

If you discover that your trailer brakes grab same as they do now when attached to another vehicles set-up, you should check the wiring first. If your main ground wire and brake magnet ground wires are not properly attached, the bad ground connection could be causing your trailer brakes to lock up. Check for wear, corrosion, rust or dents in the wiring. Look at the ground wires on the sides of your trailer as well to determine they are properly attached to a clean metal surface. Look for damaged or shorted wires that need to be repaired.

If you isolate the issue to the brake controller, use a circuit tester connected to the brake controller wire and apply your manual override and check that a positive signal comes across. Release the override and check that no power is conducted. If there is zero power during both steps, or releasing the manual override causes a surge in power – this means you need a new brake controller.

expert reply by: Michael R

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