Trailer Brakes:

[walleyeduran]

Next week I will be picking up my new rig. The boat is on a 3100# shorelander trailer with brakes. I was wondering how the brakes on the trailer work. The owener of the marina told me that I don't need a seperate actuator wired under my truck dash, (04' silverado), but a guy I work with said he is not sure how the brakes would work unless they are surge brakes. Owener of the marina says the actuator is in the tonge and with a 5 pronge connector will communicate with the trailer brakes to work when the truck brakes are used. CONFUSED

Thanks in advance, Duran

[perchjerker]

hopefully you have surge brakes, most likely you do. They dont need the actuator under the dash. There is a master cylinder )actuator) built into the trailer tounge that applies the brakes by the weight of the trailer pushing against the hitch ball when you stop. The 5 pin electrical connector has a pin in it for the reverse lights, this is to lock out the trailer brakes when you back up. if it wasnt for this, if you were to back up a drive or uphill, the brakes would want to apply

the lockout stops this from happening

[walleyeduran]

Thanks Perchjerker, Duran

[ffishman]

If the trailer has surge brakes, you need to nothing more. If it has disk brakes, that is when you will need to lock the brakes to back up.

[SingleShot]

Shorlander use surge style disc brakes on most of their trailers. They use a 5 pin flat connector. The 5th pin is for the reverse lock-out or bypass valve which is activated by your reverse lights. If you have a 7 pin rv style plug on your vehicle the center pin is normaly configured for your reverse lights and hence you would be good to go with a 7pin to 5 pin flat adapter. I just picked up a used boat with a shorlander trailer. I called shorlander to get the specs as I had to trailer it back over 1k miles. The people are top notch and will answere any questions you have. I wanted to be preparied to make any repairs roadside if needed.

JIm

[albhb3]

surge brakes are the ****, as well as the brand we have used it... we beat it up in canada on some of the nastiest washed and rutted out logging roads know to man lets say for the 10 miles it takes to get to the resort off the main road it takes 1.5 hours to get there they will take a beating