ArdWrknTrk Posted May 19 Share Posted May 19 Back in January I bought a car trailer and had trouble with the brake controller on my Dodge locking up the electric brakes as soon as the brake lights came on. I reported back in January that I had found the owner's manual for my brake controller and found that the adjustments were not intuitive, and that I'd try it again after adjusting the controller correctly. Well that happened a couple weeks ago when we went to open up my folk's cabin (where the trailer lives). Unfortunately the brakes didn't work at all, so I don't know how the correctly adjusted controller works. But also the trailer running lights would come on when I hit the brake pedal. My rule of thumb is that when you have weird electrical issues with a trailer, nine times out of ten you'll find you have a bad ground (the tenth time you'll also have a bad ground, but you won't find it!). Well, this turned out to be one of the nine times. The ground tab in the electrical socket on the back of the Dodge was folded over flat, so when I plugged in a trailer it would make contact on all of the circuits except for the ground. I'm guessing that happened after I picked the trailer up since the lights and brakes all worked then. I tried bending the tab back up, but I couldn't get it aligned well enough to let a trailer plug in. And the tab was pretty weak, so even if I did get it lined up it'd probably bend over, or even break off pretty soon. I had a new socket that even lined up with all of the mounting holes in the Dodge bumper. It didn't have the nice weather-proof, plug-in connector that the factory socket had, so I had to cut and solder wires. But now I have a completely working socket again. So far I've only tested it hooking it up to Pluto (since that's the only "trailer" I have at home that has electric brakes). I didn't tow him anywhere, but all of the circuits worked. So the next time we're at the cabin I'll try with the empty trailer again. I'm going to need to have working trailer brakes before I tow Oswald home in June! (next post on the Dodge) Good sleuthing Bob! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nickelplate Posted May 19 Share Posted May 19 Good sleuthing Bob! Today I took all the rear suspension off of an F250 I'm scrapping. My original leaf springs are still on my 86 bronco, so I am going to swap the stiffer springs from this F250 at some point. I don't have anything bigger to tow with and I move a lot of cars and junk, so I'm hoping these springs will not only level out the bronco a bit better, but also help with towing stability. Worst case, it doesn't work, and I just get a new set of bronco springs or put my old ones back. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ArdWrknTrk Posted May 19 Share Posted May 19 Today I took all the rear suspension off of an F250 I'm scrapping. My original leaf springs are still on my 86 bronco, so I am going to swap the stiffer springs from this F250 at some point. I don't have anything bigger to tow with and I move a lot of cars and junk, so I'm hoping these springs will not only level out the bronco a bit better, but also help with towing stability. Worst case, it doesn't work, and I just get a new set of bronco springs or put my old ones back. How wide are the springs on your Bronco? If the axle perches of a 150/Bronco setup won't handle them it's going to prove frustrating, but I wish you the best. 👍 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nickelplate Posted May 19 Share Posted May 19 How wide are the springs on your Bronco? If the axle perches of a 150/Bronco setup won't handle them it's going to prove frustrating, but I wish you the best. 👍 I haven't checked the spring width yet, but I'll do that before taking anything off the bronco. If I remember correctly, the bronco perches on the 8.8 are smaller than the ones on the dana 60 or 70 from the truck. Edit: or maybe the truck has the sterling 10.25? I haven't checked that yet either. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nickelplate Posted May 19 Share Posted May 19 I haven't checked the spring width yet, but I'll do that before taking anything off the bronco. If I remember correctly, the bronco perches on the 8.8 are smaller than the ones on the dana 60 or 70 from the truck. Edit: or maybe the truck has the sterling 10.25? I haven't checked that yet either. Fyi: the springs are the same width. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ArdWrknTrk Posted May 19 Share Posted May 19 Fyi: the springs are the same width. That's great news! I hope the shocks aren't overwhelmed, but I suppose that's easy enough to deal with. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
derek Posted May 20 Share Posted May 20 This weekend we decided to take it easy so we just opened our doors to do some work we'd been putting off. Replaced the drivers side window because it was all scratched up and we found a replacement junkyard one a while back. Swapped out both sides vent windows because the frames on ours were all rusting away. We still plan to replace the rubber on these, but the ones we found are decent enough for now. While we were in the doors, decided to replace the speakers so we picked up some from bestbuy and put those in. Put a lighter socket back in the ashtray, ours had just a plug in there in place of the socket, but the wiring still existed for the socket so it was a pretty easy job. Still to do: Locate the arm to connect our drivers side key lock to the locking mechanism so we can unlock the door from the outside. We didn't expect it to be completely gone, we assumed something was just disconnected in there, but the arm itself seems to be gone. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dirtymac Posted May 20 Share Posted May 20 This weekend we decided to take it easy so we just opened our doors to do some work we'd been putting off. Replaced the drivers side window because it was all scratched up and we found a replacement junkyard one a while back.Swapped out both sides vent windows because the frames on ours were all rusting away. We still plan to replace the rubber on these, but the ones we found are decent enough for now.While we were in the doors, decided to replace the speakers so we picked up some from bestbuy and put those in.Put a lighter socket back in the ashtray, ours had just a plug in there in place of the socket, but the wiring still existed for the socket so it was a pretty easy job. Still to do: Locate the arm to connect our drivers side key lock to the locking mechanism so we can unlock the door from the outside. We didn't expect it to be completely gone, we assumed something was just disconnected in there, but the arm itself seems to be gone.The driver's door speaker had been replaced with some random speaker. The passenger door still had the factory speaker. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gary Lewis Posted May 20 Author Share Posted May 20 The driver's door speaker had been replaced with some random speaker. The passenger door still had the factory speaker. Wow! That should make a BIG difference! Let us know how you like it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ArdWrknTrk Posted May 20 Share Posted May 20 The driver's door speaker had been replaced with some random speaker. The passenger door still had the factory speaker. Did you guys ever meet up with Nick and George? I really appreciated his advice when I was updating the sound system in my truck. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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