Electric Brakes w/ Dust Shields - Self-Adjusting - 12-1/4" - Left/Right Hand - 10K - 10 Pairs

Video Transcript for etrailer Self-Adjusting Electric Trailer Brake Kit Review

Speaker 1: Today we're gonna be taking a look at the self adjusting 12 and one quarter inch diameter electric trailer brake kit with dust shields for both the left and right hand side for 10,000 pound axles, part number AKEBRK-10. Here's what our brakes are gonna look like, now the really nice things about this set is the fact that it's gonna be a complete unit, we're not gonna have to worry about replacing springs or individual pieces, it's just gonna be a simple bolt on design.Our brakes our a self adjusting design which means that once we have them set initially we're not gonna have to crawl underneath our trailer and mess with adjusting the brakes because they're gonna do it for us, which is really a nice thing because it's one less thing that we have to worry about. The way we're gonna make our initial adjustment is gonna be at the plug back here, it's gonna keep all that dirt and debris out from the inside of our brakes, we're gonna have a fine toothed gear to get our brakes set how we like them and set the initial tension.Our pads are gonna be bonded, not riveted, so we're not gonna have to worry about those rivets gouging into our drums and we're gonna have a nice tapered edge that's machine cut rather than snapped off so we don't have to worry about any kind of chipping or breaking on the edges here which is gonna give us more braking torque and give us a long lasting brake pad. Our brake assemblies are gonna be a 12 and one quarter inch diameter and they're gonna be three and three-eights inches wide. They do have a seven bolt mounting flange so make sure to check your trailer and make sure they'll match up and they are designed to work with 10,000 pound axles. Just keep in mind that the mounting hardware is sold separately, but you can pick it up on our website at etrailer.com.Now that we've seen what our brakes look like and gone over some of the features let's show you how to get them installed.

In order to get our new parts on we're gonna have to take our old parts off. We're gonna start by taking off our oil cap. Now we have already drained our oil and if you haven't it would be a good time to go ahead and pull the cap and get as much oil out as you can so you don't make a big mess. In order to get the nut off we're gonna have to bend these tabs out of the way so that we can spin it off. We're gonna take a flathead screwdriver and a hammer and tap them out of the way.

Take a large pair of channel locks and loosen that nut up and start pulling everything off. Remove the outer nut and then the retaining washer then the inner nut and we can pull the flat washers that was behind it off and then finally you can start working our drum back and once we have enough room we can pull the bearing out.Now would be a good time to go ahead and inspect the bearing for any kind of wear or any scoring or major heat marks before we get too far into it. We'll go ahead and clean it off and make sure that our bearing's in good shape. Now with our outer bearing and all the nuts removed we'll go ahead and grab our drum and we're gonna start working it off the spindle so we want to be careful because it is rather heavy. Make sure you have a firm grip on it and you can remove it and set it aside for now.

With the drum off now would be a good time to go ahead and inspect the spindle and all the other components on the inside, cleaning it off, making sure there's no major wear on the spindle or anywhere else. On the backside of our brake we're gonna have our electrical wires. We're gonna go ahead and cut them so that we can remove the brake and not have to worry about it hanging up. Just want to make sure you give yourself enough slack so we can reattach the new ones.On the outer side of our brake assembly we're gonna have several bolts that are holding it in place, we're gonna have three on each side and there's actually gonna be one directly behind the magnet here at the bottom. Now there is a bolt so there is a nut on the backside but to help out I'm gonna take a five-eighths socket and I'm gonna break them loose and let them free spin so it's not so tough getting them off.

Now if you can't break the bolts loose on the front side you can take a large ratchet or breaker bar and break the nuts loose on the backside, making it a little bit easier for those nuts to come off.Then I'm gonna take an 11-16ths wrench and hold the nut on the backside while I use a five-eighths socket to remove the bolt. We'll repeat that for all the remaining hardware. The last bolt at the bottom of our brake assembly is gonna be rather hard to get to but since we're replacing our brake assembly you can take a flathead screwdriver and coming in to where the magnet is you want to pop that clip out that's holding the magnet in place that way we can pull the magnet off and have a little bit more room to work with. It still may be a little difficult to get to but with the magnet out of the way it'll be a little bit easier. Now with all the hardware removed we can remove our brake assembly and it may be stuck on there pretty good, just grab a hammer and give it a few taps on the backside and it'll break it free and we can remove it.We'll go ahead and clean off the axle here, you don't need to make it spotless you just wanna get the big debris off so it's not gonna interfere with us putting our new assembly on. We can take our brake assembly and go ahead and slide it over the spindle and the axle. I want to mention that there is a sticker that's gonna tell you that it's right hand and also right at the top of our brake assembly it's gonna be stamped into this piece of metal right here. However if both of those are worn, the sticker's missing, or you just can't find it the easiest way is gonna be looking at the brake shoes themselves. With the magnet on the bottom you'll notice that the shoes are gonna be two different sizes, the smaller one is always gonna be going towards the front of the trailer so we know this is gonna be the right hand side because we're working on the right side and the smaller shoe is facing towards the front.Since our hardware holding our brake assembly on is pretty worn and rusted you can see that's covered in rust and half the threads are rolled over it's really not gonna be safe to use those so we're gonna be replacing it with a new hardware kit. You can just line up the holes on our backing plate and on the axle and we're gonna put our bolts in place and then we can get the rest of the hardware in. One thing to keep in mind is you want to watch your wires, make sure they're out of the way and they don't get pinched in between the backing plate and the brake assembly.Now just like what came off we're gonna be putting on a lock washer and then a hex nut to hold the bolts in place. Just gonna get all these on there hand tight so we don't have to worry about the assembly shifting or falling down. We're gonna get ready to connect the wires coming off of our brake assembly to the wires that are running up front. We're gonna go ahead and strip back the ends of our wires and they give you plenty of wire here on the brake assembly so we're gonna make sure that we have enough that's not gonna get tangled up but that we also have enough slack so the suspension can still move.We're gonna have two yellow wires coming off the end, now it doesn't matter which one we connect to but we're gonna take a butt connector, now these aren't included in the kit but you can pick some up on our website, and we're gonna crimp our butt connector in place onto each one of our wires. We're gonna take each one of our yellow wires and I'm actually gonna strip back a little bit more since they're thinner wires.Now since I stripped off more than normal what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna twist my wire together, I'm actually gonna fold it in half because it is a rather small gauge wire and that butt connector will grab onto it a little bit better so I'll do that for each one of my wires then we can make our connections in our butt connector. These are heat shrink butt connectors so I'm gonna take a heat gun and shrink them down, I just want to mention if you are using an open flame like a torch or a lighter you want to be extra careful not to burn or charr the wires or the connectors themselves. Now since this connection is on the outside I'm gonna take some electrical tape and I'm gonna wrap up my connectors to help protect them a little bit better.Now I'm gonna take a couple zip ties and tie the excess cable around the axle again just making sure that I leave myself enough room for the suspension to flex. Just want to make sure that the wires aren't gonna rub or chafe against anything and they're gonna be nice and out of the way. With our wire connections made we can come back and tighten up our seven bolts holding our assembly on the axle. Again I'm gonna be using a five-eighths socket to hold the head of the bolt and an 11-16ths wrench to hold the nut on the backside. I'm just gonna go around and snug them all up before I tighten them all the way. Now for the one that's behind the magnet you're gonna want to take a five-eighths wrench and kind of sneak it in underneath the spindle here to where you get ahold of it and then on the backside you're gonna want to take either a ratchet wrench or a socket and snug up the nut on the backside. Now that we have this side done we'll go ahead and repeat that for the other side.Before we put our drum back in place we want to make sure that our spindle is nice and clean because we don't want any dirt or debris or anything else getting in the way preventing our drum or the seal from seating properly. We can clean any kind of debris that got in the hub, clean that out, we're gonna start putting our bearings and all the washers back in place. We're gonna remove our cap to fill our oil and we can fill our hub back up. Once it's full we can replace the cap and then we can adjust our brakes.On the back here we're gonna have a couple plugs, just take a flathead screwdriver and we can pop them out so that we can access the gear to make our initial adjustment for our brakes. We can either get a brake adjustment tool or a flathead screwdriver and we're gonna want to turn that gear until the brakes are adjusted the way we want. Make a couple turns then we can spin our hub and see how much drag and how much movement we have. Once our brakes are adjusted we can go ahead and put our plug back in place.That'll finish up your look at the self adjusting electric trailer brake kit with dust shields for both the left and right hand side for 10,000 pound axles, part number AKEBRK-10.