Replacement Magnet Kit for 7" Electric Trailer Brake Assemblies - 2,000 lbs

Video Transcript for etrailer Electric Trailer Brake Magnet Kit Replacement Review

Hey guys, Kevin here with etrailer and today we're gonna be taking a look at etrailer's line of replacement magnet kits for electric trailer brake assemblies. Each of these replacement brake magnets fit a specific brake assembly. So you are gonna wanna know exactly what size brake assembly that you have before you go ahead and purchase that replacement magnet. This specific one is designed for 10 inch brake assemblies, which are typically gonna be on your 3,500 pound axles. So if you don't know exactly what size brake assembly you have, one good bet is to look at the capacity of your axle and that will typically get you in the right direction of what your brake assembly is. Now, typically this isn't a part that you would normally want to replace.

Essentially, if this is kind of worn out then your whole assembly is typically also worn out itself. This would be a good time to take a look at your brake shoes, look at your pads, just see how worn in they are. In our case today, it wasn't an issue with the brake assembly because this is all brand new. It just happened to be just how they ran that wiring for that brake magnet at the factory causing an issue where it was shorting out. To begin our installation we'll have to get to our brake assembly and to do that we will first need to remove our wheel which we've already gone ahead and done.

Then we're gonna pull out our pin and take our castle nut off. Then we can start working out our outer bearing. Usually you can just pull on that, that'll kind of give you enough pressure to pop it right off. Set that down on a nice clean towel. And work the rest of our hub off.

Taking a look at our brake magnet, we can see kind of where it failed. Down here on the actual magnet itself, it's starting to flake off. You can see that it started to heat up and it really started tearing into the magnet. If we look at our wiring though, that's the major cause here. This was sitting here rubbing against our brake shoe and just eating up the wire, then the wire was shorting and overheating.

On the back we're gonna have this little clip. We're gonna go ahead and just pop it off. Just kinda sit here and slowly work it out 'cause we're gonna have to reuse it. I'm just using a flathead screwdriver. (metal clanging) And once we have that out, we can pop our wiring through. So I've gone ahead and I cut that wire and worked out our little gasket that we had there. I'm gonna slip that aside for now. And now I'm gonna go ahead and just pop off these three clips and then the one that's inside of our brake right in here. And go ahead and just get that off real easy right there. Make sure these are loose. Start pulling our wiring back. (metal clanging) And we'll also remove this spring. So your new brake magnet is not gonna come with these little clips that go along the brake shoe so we're gonna have to reuse those. And as you can see with this one, they way, way over-tighten that down so it actually cut into the wire itself. So that could be another reason why this magnet failed. So we're gonna just try and work our screwdriver in there and just pry it up a bit and get it off. On your spring, you're going to have a little portion where it's kind of bent down, got that 90 degree angle that's what's gonna clip into this little hole right here and hold this spring in place. So we're gonna try to get that on here. So I'm gonna take that back part, slip it through, popped right in no problem for us. Then we can go ahead and slip on our new brake magnet. Push that in a bit and we'll stick on our center clip. Now they do give you a new one with this kit. This is the only clip that you will get. So like I said, make sure you hold onto those other ones. I'll just push that in place and that's gonna keep our magnet from being able to pop off. From there we'll go ahead and we'll sneak our wiring back and just up around and replace our clips on. And I'm just gonna put 'em in the same spot where we already had our clips and sneak our wiring out the back. Get rid of some of that excess. Go ahead and slip on all of our clips. And this time we're not gonna go nearly as tight as the previous one, just so we don't have any issues. Slightly squeeze that down just until it's kind of touching, we still want this to be able to move just a bit. Go ahead and tuck that in place and put our clip back on. And just keep repeating that process as we work our way back. I'm gonna go ahead and replace my gasket on here. Push that back in place and then I'm gonna strip the casing back on this just a little bit 'cause we're gonna using heat shrink butt connectors to attach to our wires coming from our junction box. Put on some heat shrink butt connectors. Definitely recommend going with heat shrink just because these are gonna be out and exposed to the elements. You don't want a chance of any water getting in there and corroding it and then your brake's not working. And it doesn't matter which wire you hook up to which. So we can go ahead and we'll probably just slip this top one in and crimp it down. And repeat that with our other wires. Shrink down our heat shrink butt connectors. You can use a heat gun like I'm gonna do today or if you just had a lighter, you can go ahead and use that as well. (heat gun whirring) Next I'm gonna go ahead and just kinda zip tie this up just a little bit. I'm gonna leave enough so that when the axle kind of moves, you know, it's not gonna get pinched on anything but I also don't want it hanging too low where it's gonna get caught on anything. Now that our brakes back in place, we can go ahead and reassemble our hub. Just push that on, we'll place on our outer bearing. And we can just use our castle nut to kind of drive in our outer bearing. We're just gonna go until that's tight and then we'll back it off so we can get our pin in place. So got no movement out of the hub. A little tight from just my hands, so we're gonna back that off just a bit. Right about there. Still no play. So now we can stick in our pin. And then we'll just bend that back in place. Now we can go ahead and throw on our wheel. (tire clanging) Replace our lug nuts and then the cap over our spindle. Well, I think about does it for today's look at etrailer's line of replacement magnet kits for electric trailer brake assemblies. My name's Kevin, thanks for watching.