Caravan braking on the fly

For most of us, an electric brake controller is very much a permanent fixture in our tow vehicles. You can’t tow a trailer over 750kg without it having brakes (for some vehicles, it’s even less than 750kg) and of these, most use electric brakes.

If you’re running electric trailer brakes, there’s no way around having an electric brake controller (EBC) in your vehicle to activate the brakes. They simply can’t work without an EBC.
Permanent fitment is the way to go in most situations but there are instances where you can benefit from a portable EBC. If you're new to caravanning and you want to try-before-you-buy (eg. rent one) - and you already have a vehicle with a towbar fitted, then a portable EBC is a good way to kick off.

Conversely, if you have a van but are either hiring a tow vehicle or have a company vehicle where a towbar is already fitted but an EBC isn’t -- then a portable EBC will get you out of strife.

The Electric Brakes Australia Portable Electric Brake Controller is an EBC loom all wired up with the necessary plugs and provides a simple plug-and-play EBC unit.

The basic seven-pin loom retails for $249 (including free standard postage within Australia)  and includes 5.5 metres of wiring from the EBC plug to the trailer plug and 1.2 metres from the EBC plug to the Narva 12v fused accessory power plug.

There’s only 50mm from the two seven-pin plugs, but that’s all that’s really needed. The loom’s female connector fits on the vehicle’s trailer connector and the loom's male connector fits onto the trailer’s connector.

No-cost options include seven pin round plugs (large or small) and for $20 extra, 12-pin plugs can be fitted on your loom. You’re not wedded to a set plug type though - you can request, for example, a round seven-pin plug to suit your vehicle and a flat-seven to suit the van.

There are two controller options, if you don’t already have one. For an extra $70 you can have a Tekonsha Primus iQ (or Hayman Reese Guardian IQ, they're the same unit) or for an additional $170 over the base loom price you’ll be sent a Tekonsha P3 Prodigy. Most buyers elect to take a controller with their loom.

The connectors are from Narva and all wire connections are soldered. Split corrugated conduit covered all wiring and electrical tape has been wrapped neatly around the ends.

The result is a very tidy, well-finished Australian product.

Does it work?

So does the loom actually work? We had a Volkswagen Amarok 580 to tow-test, fitted with a towbar but no EBC because Volkswagen Australia doesn't have a genuine approved accessory EBC on offer (and wouldn't fit an aftermarket one for us, even though we asked nicely!). Perfect opportunity to give the portable EBC a work out then...

Out of the package the only job needed is to plug in the EBC head unit, and then fit it to the car. It took 15 minutes to fit to the Amarok, but that was taking our time. Done again, we’d easily halve that installation time.

The instructions for the Hayman Reese Guardian IQ EBC head unit said it needed to be fitted horizontally and parallel to the direction of travel. The elegant solution was to put double-sided tape on the Guardian IQ’s mounting bracket and then fit the unit to the upper edge of the Volkswagen’s centre console tray.

It was a perfect fit, but on some vehicles it might not be quite so easy to find the EBC head unit a suitable home.

You’ve got a generous 1.2 metres of wire length between the EBC head unit and 12v plug, which should be plenty for finding a 12v port in most vehicles. In our case we cable-tied the excess wiring, as Volkswagen provides a 12v accessory port on the centre console, adjacent to the tray where we’d mounted the EBC head unit.

With the EBC head unit and 12v power plugged in, it was time to thread the 5.5 metres trailer wires through the cabin and tray, and there was more than enough wiring length to thread the wire through the left rear door, up into the tray and through the bottom of the tailgate.

A couple of cable-ties were used to ensure that the wiring didn’t blow around in the open tray, but clearly that won’t be necessary if your ute has a lid or canopy -- or if you’re towing with a hatch, sedan or wagon.

The seven-pin plugs took a second to plug into vehicle and caravan, and then we were good to go.

Slow time!

Setting up the brakes with the Guardian IQ was exactly the same process if the unit was hardwired into the vehicle. The brake set-up worked flawlessly.

The only potential downside is that if you were to open and shut the back door (of a ute) or wagon tailgate you’ll eventually weaken the wiring where it compresses against the shut door. You have twice as many opportunities for pins closing and leaving you with an open circuit.

The unit can only be used for trailers of up to two axles, and does not have the facility to disable parking sensors when reversing with a trailer or activate towing  ABS and/or ESC parameters. For that you’re up for a vehicle-specific trailer loom.

If for whatever reason you want to hardwire the portable EBC you can -- it just means that you have to cut up the loom and wire in to the existing trailer plug and source a fixed (and fused) power source.

Verdict

The Portable Electric Brake Controller cuts across any worries about towing illegally (and dangerously) when you don’t have an EBC hard-wired in your vehicle, and is a very simple and effective set-up.