Brakes No Longer Work After Breakaway Pin Pulled  

Question:

Expert Reply:

If I am understanding you correctly, the breakaway pin on your breakaway system was pulled which then activated the brakes on your gooseneck trailer and now the brakes won't work. If that is the case then you may have fried your brake controller as some of the older controllers do not have circuit protection built-in to protect against this. For future reference, if you're ever going to test your breakaway system you will need to do so with the trailer connector detached from the tow vehicle.

In order to test whether or not the brake controller was damaged you will first need a multimeter. Once you have this you will then need to sever the blue brake output wire about 6" from behind the controller and test for power with the manual override applied and the brake controller at max power. You should be seeing a full 12 volts here but if not the above has likely occurred and the brake controller will need to be replaced for which I recommend using the Tekonsha Prodigy P2 Trailer Brake Controller part # 90885. The Prodigy P2 has circuit protection built-in so you don't have to worry about the above issue happening again. It also comes with a lifetime warranty.

If you do have 12 volts on the blue brake output wire directly behind the brake controller then there is most likely a short in this wire that leads from the brake controller to the braking assembles so you will need to trace this and check for breaks.

expert reply by: Conner L

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