The Tacoma Towing Bible

For all intents and purposes the install of a brake controller in a 4 cyl will be the same as the write up I did for installing a brake controller in a 6 cyl non-tow package equipped truck. The only difference would be where to tap the brake signal from. There should be a harness and a plug attached to the brake switch attached to your brake pedal. With the brake pedal depressed you should get a 12 volt reading from one of the wires that you don't get when the pedal is not depressed. That is the wire you will want to tap for picking up the brake signal, then you run the other three wires into the cab and connect them to the brake controller as well, positive from the battery, ground, and output to the harness at the bumper. Sorry I can't be more specific there, but I do not have a 4cyl truck at my disposal to photograph or take voltage measurements from. If you complete this please do document it and add it in here as it would benefit other members as well.

Also, before you undertake this, make sure that the trailer you are looking at does in fact have electric brakes and not surge brakes. A lot of boat trailers have suge brakes as they as less prone to failure after repeated submergings at the boat ramp, particularly in salt water. You will also need to look into an adapter becasue if the boat trailer in question does have electric brakes it will likely use a 5-flat plug, and not a 7-round RV stye plug, so you'll need to adapt the 7-round to a 5-flat, which should be about 20 bucks or so.

If I can help further or clarify anything please ask.

Regards,

 

Interesting product. Just bought one of these to stabilize my hitch mounted hand truck dolly carrier: http://www.hitchrider.com/hitch-vise-fit-guide-2.htm

 

Don't have directions with my drawtite activator and don't want to mess up anything. Controller has blue, black, white and red wires. I have jumper harness that came with truck but no directions. Which wires go together?

Thanks,

Jay

 

WHITE on your controller is ground. Connect to BROWN on your jumper harness.

BLACK on your controller is power. Connect to BLACK W/ RED tracer on your jumper harness.

BLUE on your controller is signal output. Connect to RED on jumper harness.

RED on your controller is signal input. Connect to GREEN W/ WHITE tracer on your jumper harness.

SOLID GREEN on your jumper harness is the illumination circuit and is not used on your controller, just tape it up and ignore it.

 

Thanks Maverick!

 

Question??? Okay, so I've located the factory brake controller harness and noticed a different in the wire colors. The heavy gauge yellow wire is a heavy gauge blue wire. It still haves the light weight green, blue, and black&white. And I put a meter on it to determine that I had connector.

Another question, what's with all those unused connector?

Thanks

Rock

 

Recomend you "cheat" and do like I did and skip the harness that the factory provided. If you've got the 6cyl and the connector behind the left kick plate then buy a premade harness. My tekonishia Prodigy brake controller came with one pretty cheap. Plug-n-play with no worry about what wire is what.

 

Thank you so much for the info, it really helped me out in knowing where to start with towing. Thx again.

 

Maverick,thanks for putting this thread together!! Great timing from my perspective, we leave for Colorado pretty soon. will be pulling a 19' Airstream. Unfortunately I will not have time to do the rear spring mod, but packing as light as we can, not traveling with any water in any of the holding tanks, getting food once we get to Lake City, will help. I will adjust the WD hitch to make sure it's level..Let you know how it goes..Just curious, coming down off Monarch Pass, I plan on keeping the Tranny in 2nd gear. all that weight pushing on the transmission, for a long steep descent, ok??? Thanks,Jeff

 

NIce post thanks!

 

How come the book in my 04 double cab 4x4 says 7500lbs towing???

 

i dont see why it would hurt anything... just dont keep the revs to high and you should be fine.. on a long decent like that just remember not to ride the brakes.. use them when you need them to slow down a bit and then let off...

 

It seemed pretty weird, I just kept it in 2nd on the way down Monarch Pass. The rpms stayed around 3-4k.. If I remember right, the mph was around 40.. I never had to touch the brake. All I had read about this pass (monarch) was that people had so much trouble with it. Over heating, burning out brakes, etc. I kept it in 2nd going up 30 to 40 mph, pleanty fast.. No over heating. 2nd gear on the way down, didn't have to touch the brakes.. I kept thinking, what is so hard about this? Don't get me wrong, I could feel 4,000lbs pushing a bit, but not bad. Then it looked like snow at the top, and I got a little nervous, but clean sailing.
I likr this truck..
Jeff

 

glad to hear... one thing i used to do if i knew i was gonna be going down a steep long grade was to adjust the trailer brakes up a little more. this allowed me to just barely touch the brake pedal when the trailer started pushing real bad and that would engage the trailer brakes and help keep the trailer from going crazy. i always liked to really feel the trailer brakes grab when towing larger trailers anyways....

 

great thread very informative. Im gonna be purchasing a TT jayco 22fb within a week, it uvw is 4100lbs, hitch weight of 410lbs im getting a wd hitch and prodigy brake controller. I live in buffalo ny so hills are not a big issue. Will i be good to go with this setup or do i need somethin else. Kinda gettin nervous bout buying it. No real long hauls either maybe 30-100 miles at most. thanks

 

I would like to build this small dump trailer for use behind my 2008 Taco 4 cyl with auto. Empty weight is 1311 lbs. and tongue weight (empty) is 220 lbs. I have the Hidden hitch class III installed with wiring. (Thanks to this forum)

Has anyone actually drove a regular cab/2wheel drive, within the 3500 lb limit? How did it handle? Did you require/recommend trailer brakes? I will only use this for once a month trips all under 30 miles fully loaded and no significant hills.

Here are the plans I am building too> 8’x5' Air or Hydraulic Dump Trailer Model AD08 Plans


http://www.trailerplans.com//index....ufacturer_id=0&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=2

Any recommendations/concerns? Appreciate the advise/help.

 

First-off, the vehicle was a 4 cylinder manual 06' access cab. Towed a 1,400lb (empty) enclosed trailer with a 1000lb payload for 1,400 miles without problem at highway speeds. The only annoyance was dropping down to 3rd gear for steep hills. The vehicle pulled well from a dead start and braked sufficiently well without using trailer brakes.

IMHO: Given the terrain and distance you described, you'll be just fine. Just remember that automatic transmissions heat quickly when they have to adjust to load. If you said 100+ miles round trip, then you would have to pay more attention to overheating.

 

What are the problems with towing in reverse?

 

Bump...

I've heard it's bad. I'm wondering why?

 

You're probably going to have to elaborate more on the question.

The only thing that comes to mind is with surge brake trailers. Anytime your backing up, unless you lock out the trailer brake system, the trailer brakes will activate and could prohibit the backing up of the trailer.