Seeking Tow Equipment & Vehicle Model Recommendation

[MapNerd]

So am I right to say that in your setup, there is assumption that if your coach is sending the electrical brake signal to your 7-pin connector, which in turn lights up your LED at the driver’s seat as well as your towed vehicles brake lights, that your towed vehicle’s brakes are applied, even though that may not actually be the case. The coach could be sending the electrical signal, which lights up your towed vehicles brake lights and your LED at the driver’s seat, but air isn’t making it to the operating unit or cylinder, or it is and perhaps the actuator is stuck, whatever the issue, the brake pedal is not actually being applied - or air was never released and the brakes are applied.

In both of those cases, your LED would not indicate any issue.

To be clear, I am not trying to say this is particularly unsafe or anything of that nature. There are several ways to ice the cake, each has its own strengths and opportunities. If anything, I’m just trying to point out the limitation here so that others considering the system can make an informed choice as to how they want theirs set up and so that if this never occurred to you, well it does now and you can decide whether or not to change anything.

 

[flyboy013]

So am I right to say that in your setup, there is assumption that if your coach is sending the electrical brake signal to your 7-pin connector, which in turn lights up your LED at the driver’s seat as well as your towed vehicles brake lights, that your towed vehicle’s brakes are applied, even though that may not actually be the case.

No. That is incorrect. The coach does not send an electrical signal to the toad via the 7-pin connector to have the brakes applied.

When the coach's brakes are applied, air is provided from the coach's ping tank to the toad's AFO system which applies the toad brakes; just as the system is designed by SMI. When the brakes are applied, the reed switch closes and sends a signal to the LED which has been remoted to the coach as opposed to hanging from the toad's rear view mirror.

 

[TJ&LadyDi]

So am I right to say that in your setup, there is assumption that if your coach is sending the electrical brake signal to your 7-pin connector, which in turn lights up your LED at the driver’s seat as well as your towed vehicles brake lights, that your towed vehicle’s brakes are applied, even though that may not actually be the case. The coach could be sending the electrical signal, which lights up your towed vehicles brake lights and your LED at the driver’s seat, but air isn’t making it to the operating unit or cylinder, or it is and perhaps the actuator is stuck, whatever the issue, the brake pedal is not actually being applied - or air was never released and the brakes are applied.

In both of those cases, your LED would not indicate any issue.

To be clear, I am not trying to say this is particularly unsafe or anything of that nature. There are several ways to ice the cake, each has its own strengths and opportunities. If anything, I’m just trying to point out the limitation here so that others considering the system can make an informed choice as to how they want theirs set up and so that if this never occurred to you, well it does now and you can decide whether or not to change anything.

Well, I can never be absolutely sure that the brakes on the toad are being applied; the master cylinder could freeze up or lose its fluid, all four brake cylinders could freeze up, etc., etc. All I can go by is whether the toad brake pedal is being activated at that point in time. In my system, the signal that is triggered by the micro switch on the pedal activator is fed to the 6-pin connector on the toad and on to the 7-pin connector on the coach.

As part of our departure checklist, I physically inspect the pedal actuator cylinder (since I once had a problem with the pull cable) and observe the pedal actuation when my co-driver operates the coach brakes. If the toad brake pedal depresses, I consider that it is working correctly.

TJ

 

[MapNerd]

No. That is incorrect. The coach does not send an electrical signal to the toad via the 7-pin connector to have the brakes applied.

When the coach's brakes are applied, air is provided from the coach's ping tank to the toad's AFO system which applies the toad brakes; just as the system is designed by SMI. When the brakes are applied, the reed switch closes and sends a signal to the LED which has been remoted to the coach as opposed to hanging from the toad's rear view mirror.

I knew I was missing something. You tapped into the reed switch and are sending power back to the coach to light the driver’s led, so its the reed switch doing it’s normal thang that’s lighting up your LED at the driver’s seat. Purdy smart!

For some reason, I didn’t catch that you were sending the signal back to the coach via the unused pin in the 7-pin connector. I assumed you were just tapping the brake signal from your coach in the harness and sending it on to the tow vehicle and a signal back to your driver’s LED. This makes a lot more sense now.