Bright Way Trailer Breakaway Kit with Switch and 0.5-Amp Charger

Video Transcript for Bright Way Trailer Breakaway Kit with Switch Review

Adam: Hi everyone. Adam with etrailer.com. Today we're going to be talking about the Bright Way Breakaway System for your trailer. Basically what this is going to do, it's going to make sure that, when, if in the instance that your trailer comes disconnected from your vehicle, it's actually going to have a battery in here, it's going to lock up your brakes and bring it to a safe stop. This cable right here is going to be connected to your truck, SUV, whatever it may be, and basically if it comes disconnected, and your chains also fail, this is going to be a another fail safe. When you pull it like this, it's actually going to complete a connection and lock up your brakes, bringing it to a safe stop.

The safety system is required in most States for your larger trailers that are a little bit heavier, and it's just going to give you a third fail safe just in case something goes awry.Bright Way does have a bunch of options. We do have the one right here that's going to come with everything you need. The battery, the case and the charger, and of course your breakaway switch. There is one tier up from this kit and it's going to have a push to test button, just to test your voltage. There is a more basic kit, and what the basic kit's going to come with is basically everything, just minus the charger.On our website we do have replacements for our breakaway switch here, regardless of what the issue is, or if you just wanted to get a new one, we will have a replacement of that.

If your battery is not holding a good charge, we do sell replacements of these batteries as well. Or if you just wanted to add a charger to your existing system, if you don't have one, we do sell the chargers separate as well.For your larger trailers that might take a little bit more load to lock up those rear brakes, we do have a push button test kit, we have three of them, and they're going to have a little bit beefier of a charger. The charger we have here is actually going to give us about 0.5 amps to our battery, but the bigger ones are going to come with a bigger battery, and go from one amp to eight two amp charger.For your smaller trailers, I do believe that this smaller kit with the 0.5 amp charger is going to get the job done. All we really need is for those brakes to lock up and hold for about 15 minutes, that's the requirement in most States. But for your bigger trailers, we are going to probably need a bigger battery and a bigger charger, and those push test kits on our website are definitely going to get the job done.There are three different ways we can wire this up to our trailer.

The first is going to be the simplest setup. Basically we're just going to connect everything together but not have anything charging our battery. That will require us to make sure that this thing is properly charged whenever we're going down the road, so it's going to do what we need it to.There's another easier way, and basically that's going to be just taking our positive from our battery and tying it in to the positive coming from our seven pole. There's a couple of cons to that setup, just because it can either overcharge your battery, or it can actually drain it since it's actually tied into the system that's feeding your whole entire trailer.Then there's the third way, which in my opinion is the right way, and the best way, and that's where we're going to be doing today. All that is, is basically the same standard set up just with our charger in here.

It's not that much more expensive, and it's just going to take care of your battery and make sure that it's nice and charged up for those emergency situations.The first thing we need to do, is find the best spot to put it on our trailer. I do suggest putting it, probably on the inside of the frame, not underneath, you don't want anything to hit it, or just keep it as far away from the elements as possible. If you have room on the inside of your trailer, you can do that too, we might need a little bit more wire to run it, but whatever's best for your trailer, just find a great spot. I think I'm going to put it down here, and I already pre-marked our holes here, so I'm going to drill these out and then I'm actually going to just fasten it with some self tapping screws. They don't come with the kit, but if you do have a U bolt that will fit this size, it actually will work pretty well with this size trailer here. It will just clamp around our beam here and it'll fit through these tiny slots. If that's something you would like, you will have to go to the hardware store and pick up some of those U bolts.Bright Way kits do not come with U bolts. There is a kit by Hopkins that does come with that, so if you don't want to drill into your trailer, whether it's old or new, those U bolts aren't going to damage that frame, it's basically just going to wrap around it giving it a pretty secure fit.I'm going to go ahead and mount this up. I'm going to go ahead and pop this battery into place. Whenever you're mounting your box, be sure to have this little half moon shape here facing towards where you plan on running the wires. You don't have to, it'll look a little bit cleaner whenever you're done. Same goes with our cap, make sure it's facing the same side as where we're running the wires. Now we can just go ahead and put our cap on, and screw these into place. Make sure you get it nice and tight. There is a little rubber O ring that sits in the inside here, so it is going to be protected from the elements.Now we just need to find the best place to mount our breakaway switch. We do want it towards the front of our trailer here, and we want to make sure that the cables are going to be able to reach. I think this is probably the best spot. I'm going to grab some self tappers, they don't come with it, and we're just going to drill right into our frame here.Now that I have my hole pre-drilled, I do suggest doing that, just makes it a little bit easier. Put it up into place and fasten it down. Give it a good wiggle, make sure it's not going anywhere.We're going to go ahead and put some ring terminals on the end of these wires here. These are not included in the kit, but you can grab some here at etrailer.com or, at your local hardware store.We are using a junction box here, and that's why we're going to be using those ring connectors. We do have these here at etrailer.com, this is the Buyer's Product junction box. It's just going to make wiring this up a little bit more neat and orderly. From our battery box, we are going to put ring terminals on our positive power and our ground, and we're going to utilize our junction box here and grab that connection there. On our breakaway switch we are going to take our blue wire and we're going to hard wire it to the blue wire that comes from our box. Then we're going to take our black wire here, we're actually going to feed that into our junction box, put a ring terminal on it and connect it to our brakes. We are going to have to take this bracket off here, and we can just lay this in here real nice. inaudible 00:07:50 ground. We can go ahead and grab our power from the junction box. Tighten it back down.Now we can go ahead and hard wire our blue wire from our box, and our blue wire from our switch. The switch is going to be a little long, so trim it up if you need to. We're going to put a heat shrink on here, and it does not come with the kit. You can pick some here at etrailer.com. Basically we're just going to put the two together, and then crimp it down. Now we just give it a good tug, make sure it's secure, and then we can go ahead and bring on the heat.Now we can go ahead and take our black wire from our switch. We're going to hook it up to our brake terminal here. You're going to have to cut it, it's quite a long wire, strip it, and then crimp it down.Now that we've made all of our connections, it's going to be a great time to check and see if everything works. One way to test that, is to have somebody go by your brakes and whenever you pull this, it should activate your brakes, and you might hear a little bit of clicking back there. We can also take a volt meter, and just make sure that when this is pulled, we have a full circuit going through the blue wire and our black wire.This black wire is coming from our switch, and it won't have power unless the switch is pulled. This is our terminal here, so I'm going to put that on there, grab ground from over here, and if everything's working properly, when we pull this, we're going to hear a beep. Everything's all good, so now we can go ahead and just basically put our cap back on. Then we're pretty much ready to roll.Well everyone that's going to do it for our look at the Bright Way Trailer Breakaway System.