The Tacoma Towing Bible Tacoma World. Brake Controllers and their Install You must have a brake controller because with a trailer at the tow rating of 6. Based on a curb weight of roughly 4. Also with a brake controller you can manually engage the trailers brakes without engaging the trucks brakes. That is a lifesaver if the trailer should get a little squirrelly on you. What I mean is that you can engage the trailer brake which slows the trailer while the truck attempts to maintain its speed. This pulls the trailer into a straighter line behind the truck and takes away the room it had to sway when it was trying to move at the same speed or faster than the truck, and as such brings it back under control where if you engage all the brakes youll likely only make it worse, as that way everything is still trying to move at the same speed. Vehicle Wiring Connectors. Vehicle side connectors are electrical sockets typically mounted within or below a tow vehicle bumper for the purpose of trailer towing. Issuu is a digital publishing platform that makes it simple to publish magazines, catalogs, newspapers, books, and more online. Easily share your publications and get. Im thinking of buying a 2008 tacoma 2. I. Also, even with a properly set up brake controller you stopping distance will still likely be at least one and a half times greater than the truck by itself, so you will still have to get used to it and alter some of what you do driving when you have a trailer in tow. Brake controller install The pigtail for the brake controller should have been in the glove box when you bought the truck. If not go back to the dealership and ask for it as it was part of your purchase price. This is for v. 6s with the towing package from the factory onlyThe plug is under the dash on the drivers side right above the top of the kick panel. The trailer brake pigtail I believe is Toyota part number 8. A blackred tracer, solid green, solid red, solid brown and greenwhite tracer. The BLACK W RED TRACER is your power to the controller. I/41g3n9TKQVL._SL500_AC_SS350_.jpg' alt='Hopkins Wiring Kit 47185 Installation' title='Hopkins Wiring Kit 47185 Installation' />The GREEN W WHITE TRACER is the stoplight switch. Where the truck tells the controller to engage the trailer brakesThe SOLID RED is the output from the brake controller to the trailer itself. The SOLID BROWN is the ground The SOLID GREEN is the illumination circuit. You will not need this for Drawtite and Reese controllers, just tape it up and ignore it. That brings you down to four wires, which will match up with the terminals on the back of the controller, after that it is just plug and play. For what its worth, I chose the Draw Tite Activator III for my truck as I could find no good place to mount a brake controller. The Activator III is capable of mounting on any angle, anywhere, and has a hand box that comes out of it with your display, adjustments, and manual trailer brake activation switch. Now, in all honesty with the supplied length of wire from the pigtail, there is absolutely nowhere under the dash that you can mount the controller. So what I did was to go to the local hardware store, pick up 4 feet of each color wire. The RED W BLACK and the SOLID RED were 1. I soldered the new wire to the factory harness, heat shrunk the connections, taped the whole thing into its own harness, and then routed it down through the kick panel, under the door sill molding, and out under the drivers seat following the wiring for the seat belt light. The controller itself will have four openings and four screws in the back of it. Each opening will be marked as I have described above. JPG' alt='Hopkins Wiring Kit 47185 Installation' title='Hopkins Wiring Kit 47185 Installation' />You would then strip a quarter inch of insulation from the correct wire, insert it in the opening and tighten down the corresponding screw to clamp the wire down and make contact. Repeat for the remaining three wires. I Velcroed the controller itself to the carpet under the seat, and then when I am towing, I plug the hand box in and leave it sitting in one of the cup holders in the console. Now, if you dont have the Gen 2 V6 with the plug and play wiring, you can still have a brake controller. Youll just need more wire, and a solder less quick connector. You run the positive and negative wires from the battery to the location of your controller. You route the output signal from the controller back to the trailer brake pin pin 2, bottom left in a 7 way round plug. Then you just splice the input signal wire into the brake switch wire. Youll need a wiring diagram of your truck for this, as I do not know which color wire that is off hand. You may also see something called a pulse preventer mentioned in your brake controller instructions. A pulse preventer is not required in Toyota and most other foreign applications because the turn signals are a different bulb and socket from the brake lights. A pulse preventer is used for vehicles like Fords where the turn signal and brake light are the same bulb, so the pulse preventer stops the trailer brakes from engaging if you were say driving up a steep grade with your hazard lights on. Just for the record the activator III controller has been discontinued, not because it had any problems, but because it was fairly expensive compared to its competing models. IMHO, however it is the best controller for the money and the only practical one for our trucks. You can still find them through some retailers as well as on e. Bay from time to time. Setting up the Brake Controller Ok the brake controller is relatively easy to dial in once you have it installed. Long story short there are usually two different adjustments on a brake controller. There is the output and there is the gain. The output controls how hard the trailer brakes grab. The gain controls how quickly after pressing the brake pedal in the truck your trailer brakes are at the max output you have set. If the brakes feel like they are grabbing, either you have the output or the gain set too high, so either the brakes are receiving too much power and stopping faster than the truck or they are getting to that level of power too quickly. For a point of reference, with my trailer 2. Jayco Jay feather Sport 1. I usually have my output set at 2. I cant remember without going outside, connecting the trailer to the truck and checking but it is a trial and error kind of thing. Bridge Construction Game Download Cracked on this page. Get all your camping stuff, food, pots, pans, toiletries, etc, and dont forget to fill the fresh water tank, and then go to a big open parking lot, and practice braking with different settings to find what is right for your truck trailer and driving style.