Quote:
Originally Posted by Dave R
I'm confused about how electric brakes could feed any information back to the tow vehicle. I was under the impression the trailer stability feature was handled by yaw sensors (the same sensors used in the vehicles standard stability control system) that detect sway in the tow vehicle and simply apply the trailer brakes a little with the built in electric brake controller. Electric over hydraulic would work fine in this system. The one downside of this system that if you are routinely abrupt with your steering inputs, you'll use a lot more gas because the system will keep putting the trailer brakes on.
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Here how it was explained to me by Ford's engineer; the truck's ABS system reads the amperage draw from the brakes and measures it against the stopping power of the truck and makes corresponding adjustments. The truck know which trailer is behind it, it learns it over time and repeated adjustments. Example: when I'm plugged into my new RV it turns the gain down to 5 and we stop smoothly. When I plug into my older five ton dump trailer, it turns the gain all the way up to 10, once I dump the load it runs itself back down to 6 or 7. In the past with the older truck I would manually make the changes to the aftermarket break controller and almost always forget to reset it, only to be slammed into the seatbelts the first time I step on the brakes (lots of skid marks leaving my driveway).
For the stabilization control the truck's sensors gyro sensors do most of the work, but the ABS system takes into account which trailer is back there and the speed of the rig and only applying enough braking power to the trailer to correct the attitude.
On a recent trip down to Florida we got caught in 40 mph cross winds and the trailer stabilization system was activated 6 times. The first time it caught me by surprise as I had forgotten about it , the rest of the times it a relief to know the truck was helping to keep us safe. There is a warning chime, then a display in the message center on the dash then the brakes applied. It happens so fast, I think the warning is just to tell what just happen.
When I'm hooked to the boat trailer with the surge brakes there is no feedback and therefore the truck doesn't known how to respond to being push around, although it does a good job, just not a smooth or easily. I sure the electro-hydraulics would supply some feedback, I'm just not sure how well it will work.