Intermittent "check trailer wiring" warning in Ram.

[webpilot]

I am getting an Intermittent Check Trailer Wiring Warning on my 2014 Ram Dually. I have towed over 25k miles with this truck without any issues, but only about 1100 miles with the new Solitude. The warning started about 600 miles into the trip.

2014 Ram 3500
Solitude 3280 FL Brake controller set to Heavy Electric
Previous 5th wheel 2014 Reflection 337 RLS Disc Brakes, Controller set to Heavy Electric over Hydraulic. Never an issue.

What I have done so far, Cleaned the contracts on the 7 Pin plug and connector. {sprayed with cleaner}
Checked the current flow on the magnet wires with a Southwire clam on Ammeter.

First test, camp on meter on right front wheel. Have someone step on brake. Truck ignition is on an din run mode, but engine is not statrted.
0.00 Amps current on the magnet.
Have someone pull the breakaway pin. 3.xx amps.
Replace breakaway pin step on brakes. 1.5 amps.
All brakes after this read about the same, 1 + amps from brake peddle and 3+ amps from breakaway switch.
wiggling of the plug in the socket had no affect at any time.

What I noticed being under the trailer is when the brake peddle was first pressed, there was no sound. What the person pressing the peddle observed was the peddle was soft and went nearly to the floor and the gain indication on the dash pegged high. After the breakaway pin was pulled and put back in, I could hear a constant tick, tick, tick and then I could hear the magnets hum {growl really} when the brake peddle was pressed. Also the peddle was very firm and gain indicator only went up less than half way, about 1/3 of the way, perfectly normal. I saw no indication of grease contamination on the wheels. Does not mean it is not there, but I saw nothing unusual.

When towing, it was very apparent when the brakes were working and when they weren't. Sometimes while braking, there would be no brakes and then the brakes would activate and when they did it was as if the breakaway pin was pulled, they stopped you in a hurry.


So the question is where to go from here? I suspect the truck because I had zero braking, and no noise initially.

Good news is the trailer is parked on it's spot for the next several months and I don't have to tow it anywhere with no brakes or intermittent brakes. Bad news is it makes it difficult to test results.

Does a Check Trailer wiring warning set a code?
Can you tell anything from the code?
How do you test the truck braking controller and system without a trailer connected?
How do you test the braking system on the trailer with no truck connected?
Can the breakaway switch affect normal braking from the truck? As far as I know it is wired in parallel to the brake wire from the truck. Is that correct?


Thanks for any help and advice you can give. As we won't be moving this for a few months, I have plenty of time to work on it, but also may not implement suggestions right away either.

Thanks very much,
George

[TucsonJim]

George - I've only encountered a brake wiring warning one time in my towing career. It was a couple of years ago while towing with my 2016 Ford F350. I had replaced the incandescent brake lamps with an LED bulb. Evidently, the truck did not see enough resistance in the circuit and flagged it as an error. When I switched back to incandescent, it worked fine again. You might try checking the brake lights on the trailer to see if they are all working. If not, it might be flagging the resistance change as an error.

Jim

[webpilot]

You might try checking the brake lights on the trailer to see if they are all working. If not, it might be flagging the resistance change as an error.

Jim

Thanks Jim,

We had a car flowing us all the way and she said the tail, brake and turn signals always worked, even when the brakes did not.

Hope you are doing well!

Thanks,
George

[Guest]

The brake pedal on the truck is independent on the operation of the trailer from a mechanical perspective. However if your testing with engine off and ignition on, the difference could be coming from any vacuum reserve bleeding off in the brake booster if it was recently ran before doing the engine off/ignition on test. The difference in this case between a system that still has a vacuum reserve to one that does not could vary the voltage from the brake pedal to the brake controller based on position. Rather than testing with the TV brake pedal, test with the brake controller slider to apply full current.
If you slide the brake controller to full apply, you should be getting the same voltage as in pulling the pin which would be a full apply to the trailer brakes.

Some codes can help to diagnose the trailer but intermittent issues can sometimes be difficult to find. As Tucson mentioned, there is a minimal resistance that must be picked up by the TV to flag that a trailer is connected. So changing from incandescent lights to LEDs may require a resistor to be added to the system.

Jim

[webpilot]

test with the brake controller slider to apply full current.
If you slide the brake controller to full apply, you should be getting the same voltage as in pulling the pin which would be a full apply to the trailer brakes.

Some codes can help to diagnose the trailer but intermittent issues can sometimes be difficult to find. As Tucson mentioned, there is a minimal resistance that must be picked up by the TV to flag that a trailer is connected. So changing from incandescent lights to LEDs may require a resistor to be added to the system.

Jim

Thanks Jim,

I knew that, I have no idea why I did not think of it at the time! Next time I hook up, I will try it from the controller slides. Brake lights are original, I don't know what they have on the Solitude. ON the Reflection I did change to LEDs and had no issues.

I put a OBD reader on the truck today and there were no current, saved, or pending codes.

Thanks very much for your help!

George

[Wapati Wind]

Hi George.
I had a similar problem with my 2018 Ram 3500 & Reflection 303RLS in January while travelling south. For 2 days I was getting a intermittent brake warning: check trailer wiring & trailer not connected.

I stopped in at a trailer shop & they thought it to be the 7-way, so I had it replaced. Nope. Further down the road the same intermittent brake warning started again. Ping- no brakes, 5 seconds later trailer brakes connected. Ping, ping, ping, ping... then a few hours of no problems.

Ping, ping... It got scary when, ping & trailer brakes didn't reconnect. Very narrow shoulder on I-15 dropping down into St. George, UT & 5 miles to the next off ramp. No trailer brakes - zero! Whew, I love that built in Jacobs compression brake in the Ram. Made it to our camp & crawled under the 5'er to inspect every wiring connection & routing.

I pulled the slack wires out of the axle tubes checking for abrasion. Nothing suspisous seen. I went back to the Ram thinking it might be the built in controller, but now I had trailer brakes. I determined there was a wire short inside the axle tube.

Went to the local Ace & bought some 10 guage wire, shrink-tube butt splices, & heavy duty zip-ties. All good, no problems with intermittent brake warnings since then. Thousands of miles & smiles.

That was my issue. I did not run wires through the axles tubes again. Here is a pic. I am able to now visually inspect wiring while performing suspension maintenance. Hope this helps.

[webpilot]

Thanks very much Kevin! I did pull the wires out of the tubes as far as I could get them to inspect and saw no issues. But that does not mean there are none there. I am getting disc brakes put on toward the beginning on December, so all the wiring in the axle tubes will go away then and we will revisit the issue. I suspect it will go away with the drum brakes.

I like your straight forward solution.

Thanks,
George

[RoyB]

Not of much help, but I have had this issue twice before on 2 different trailers. First was the contacts on the 7 pin were corroded. I replaced the connector and cut back the loom to fresh copper and all was well. The second time the wiring to the trailer brakes had corroded under the trailer. The connection point where the wire attaches to the brakes from the axle tube. I fixed those connections and all was back to normal. One last area to check might be the truck wiring itself. 6 year old truck may have some corrosion in the truck plug connections.

[webpilot]

Not of much help, but I have had this issue twice before on 2 different trailers. First was the contacts on the 7 pin were corroded. I replaced the connector and cut back the loom to fresh copper and all was well. The second time the wiring to the trailer brakes had corroded under the trailer. The connection point where the wire attaches to the brakes from the axle tube. I fixed those connections and all was back to normal. One last area to check might be the truck wiring itself. 6 year old truck may have some corrosion in the truck plug connections.

Thanks very much RoyB

[webpilot]

Hi All,

Here is an update on this situation. Today I had Performance Trailer Braking install Disc Brakes and upgrade springs to 4K springs. When the drums were removed, two wheels had the magnets not attached to the backing plate and flopping around, can't work very well that way. One wheel was completely greased up from a bad seal. That left one brake out of 4 working somewhat normally. This unis is barely one (barely) year old and probably has less that 3000 miles on it including transport from Indiana. We bought it used {barely) from a private party, so the chassis warranty does not transfer. This unit has 7K Dexter axles. I am sure that the intermittent condition will now go away, but it will be several months before it really gets on the road again. I am pretty disappointed in the quality of the Dexter springs and brake parts. I was not fond of Lippert suspension components, but it appears to me that Dexter is no better. This should NOT happen to a unit hat has so few miles on it. Rant over.

Thanks for listening,
George

[TucsonJim]

Thanks for the update George. On my 2017 rig with Lippert axles, all four brakes were completely contaminated with grease upon delivery to me. It was so bad, the back of the wheels were covered in grease. I had to replace the brakes before our first trip!

Jim