Off Topic: Trailer Brake Help

plowboy · Post by **plowboy** » Sun Dec 10, 2006 11:38 am

I am trying to figure this out but have no expeirence with trailer brake controllers. I have to go to Memphis to pick up my bronco and a friend of mine agreed to tow it with his suburban but it is not set up for brakes. I purchaced a Hopkins controller(part# 47225) to control the trailer brakes. The Problem:

The trailer is set up with two flat 4 pin plugs. One wired for the lights, the other wired for the brakes. Both sets of wires are the same color (white,brown, black, yellow). My the brake controller has a white(ground) red(cold side of brakelight switch) black(+side of battery) and blue(connect to trailer brakes).

So which of the 4 wires on the 4 pin does the blue hook to and do I have to do anything to the the other three on the flat connector?

Any help would be much appreciated.

ranger5.0 · Post by **ranger5.0** » Sun Dec 10, 2006 12:01 pm

Normally a 7 pin RV plug is used a trailer with brakes. You may have to trace the wires back to the brakes on the trailer and find out where the positive input is relation to the flat 4 plug. usually there is 2 wires coming out of the brake backing plate ( one positive and one is ground ). Typically the are color coded red and black respectively. The problem with the flat four's is that the don't normally have a heavy enough gauge wire to run the amps that the brakes will draw. My brake controller calls for a 25 amp circuit breaker on the positive input, that way the brakes will come back on if you happen to trip the breaker. Good Luck

plowboy · Post by **plowboy** » Sun Dec 10, 2006 8:18 pm

My controller calls for a 25 or 30 am breaker/fuse on the hot wire and a 10 ga. wire back to the trailer brakes. I didn't look closely enough to see if the wires used for breaks were the correct size or not, I will check that.

You did confirm what I thought was correct and that is the brakes only use two wires. I can trace those down and go from there. Thanks