Demco Hydraulic Brake Actuator - Drum - Primed - 12" Adjustable Channel Down - 20,000 lbs

Video Transcript for Review of Demco Brake Actuator - Surge Brake Actuator - DM8202532

Hello, everybody. This is Jeff at etrailer.com. Today, we're gonna take a look at this Demco 12-inch adjustable channel down hydraulic drum brake actuator. Has a 20,000 pound gross towing weight capacity, and you can see, it has a nice prime finish to it. Now this hydraulic actuator will activate your trailer's brake when your tow vehicle will slow or stop. Basically, what happens is when you apply the brakes in your tow vehicle, deceleration occurs, and the momentum will push your trailer toward the rear of your vehicle.

And with a surge brake system like this, the actuator is triggered as your trailer moves forward once your tow vehicle starts to slow down, and when this happens is the inner slide of the actuator will contract and applies force to the master cylinder that's in the back here. And this in turn supplies the necessary hydraulic pressure to engage your trailer brakes and stop the trailer. Now, between these two, between the inner slide and the outer case, they use acetal copolymer lining, and it provides a nice, smooth operation as the actuator will telescope in and out. We mentioned up front here, you can see it has this adjustable channel, has five different mounting positions for your coupler. Now the coupler is not included.

We do sell those separately on our website. And this is a channel down design. You can see how it goes down further. This allows for a greater drop if you're towing tall trailers. Now, just to give you a few measurements.

The height on the channel we mentioned is 12 inches tall. The width, which is always measured inside the inside is three inches. This is a heavy duty steel construction, has a nice prime finish to it. Does use a composite master cylinder in the back here, which is durable and efficient. It is a glass-reinforced nylon construction, which resists rust and corrosion.

Offers a large reservoir, which provides increased capacity for the brake fluid. And up top here, uses an automotive style diaphragm cap, which creates a completely enclosed system to help prevent contamination of the brake fluid. Now, the breakaway cable and the hook, as you'll notice right up here at the top, it is all included and installed. And this part is required by law because it does prevent a trailer runaway situation. What happens is you take this hook with the keeper on it, and this will hook to the tow vehicle. And then this cable runs all the way back to the lever here. So what happens, if in this case it would detach from your tow vehicle, this cable would be pulled, which would activate the lever, which would again activate the pressure of the brake cylinder, which would bring the trailer to a stop. So it is required by law to have this breakaway cable on your trailer. Now this is a bolt on or weld on installation. You can see at the bottom here it does mount to a straight three-inch wide trailer tongue. And, again, it can be bolted on or welded on. This part is made in the USA. A few specs on this, the application, this is for trailers that have hydraulic drum brakes. Gross towing weight capacity of 20,000 pounds, maximum tongue weight of 2,000 pounds. This goes by a model number of DA20. But one last note I do wanna mention on this, because this actuator here does not include a reverse lockout, it is recommended that you equip your trailer with either a reverse lockout solenoid that will screw right into the back of the master cylinder here or to have free backing brakes on your trailer so that you can drive in reverse without this actuator triggering your trailer's brakes. But that should do it for the review on this Demco 12-inch adjustable channel down hydraulic drum brake actuator with the 20,000 pound gross towing weight capacity in the prime finish.