Thursday, Feb 25, 2010 at 20:59
Okay, for the doubters...
They were mechanical override brakes. I bought the electric brakes on eBay, and as I said, they just bolted on. As the mechanical override system uses the handbrake system, there was no problem there, the handbrake works as it always has.
What gave me the idea was that there were the wires at the brakes, not connected of course, but available for use.
The connection was easy, the brakes tested fine. As for "disabling" the override brakes, I put a metal pipe clamp in the part of the trailer hitch that slides forward with mechanical override brakes (as the original stopper had disappeared under previous ownership) to leave the handbrake still working, but not have two competing braking systems.
My question is covering two issues. I have heard some say that the wiring through the 7 pin plug and in the standard 7 core cabling is too light. One suggestion was that it was better to run heavier wire through a spare connection on a 12 pin connector so that heavy duty wire runs to the brakes.
This then seems to me to suppose that there should be heavier wire to the brake lights anyway.
Which brings me back to my concern that the installation on the car is the cause of the problem. This, I think, was Mike's point. However, I am unclear as to where he means for the wire to be connected. Should there be a long wire from near to the brake light back to the controller? What about voltage drop in that instance?
The auto electrician I went to does not strike me as particularly knowledgeable about fitting electric brakes, but there are few choices out here.
I could take the van to either
Bathurst or Dubbo as there are specialists there, but I'd like to know what questions to ask first.
FollowupID:
675719