Jayco 12' Pop up with Electric Brakes - brake control needed?

[smcgillivray]

I purchased a Jayco 12' Pop Up Camper and had a Toyota 4 cylinder Truck with a brake control. I recently bought a new truck ( Nissan Crew Cab V6 ). It currently doesn't have a tow package, but getting a power harness added and hitch bar. Do I need the Electric Brake on my new Truck? They told me I had to have on my other truck as it assisted in stopping the trailer.

S

[dalenoel]

If you have electric brakes on the trailer then you will need a controller for those brakes. I did not think that electric brakes were required on a 12' pop up camper but the last pop up I had was in the 80's. Mine was surge brakes.

Which type of plug do you have from the PUP to the truck? If it is the round 7 pin then you will need the brake controller for sure.

On some Jayco PUP the option is for electric or even surge brakes. You first need to know this.

[jim44646]

I had a 12' Coleman pop up that had trailer style brakes. I used a Prodigy P2 controller. Some vehicles have a factory plug under dash others you have to hard wire . Either way it's fairly simple.

[RedHorse1]

In "normal" driving you might get by without a brake controller. But when the YAHOO cuts you off, decides to make an unannounced lane change or stop you may find them handy.
Remember there's no intelligence test required for a drivers license.

[RoyBraddy]

Found this searching the internet...

http://www.readybrake.com/state_laws.html

[shellback]

If you have electric brakes you will need a brake controller to make them work. I second Jim44646's recomendation of the Prodigy P2 controller. It may cost a little more but it is well worth it.

[BlueBrick]

All the wiring is there for towing, you just need the harness that plugs in under the truck in the rear and mounts to the hitch. Also a couple of relays need to be installed behind the front passenger kick panel in the footwell. The brake controller is your choice, but as others have mentioned, the Prodigy is one of the better ones. You will need to get the pigtail wiring harness that plugs in under the dash of your Frontier(dealer?) and connect that to the brake controller, then install it in your truck where you like.
I had a 10 ft tent trailer when I got my Frontier and wouldn't have towed without hooking up the electric brakes. Too many times when I needed the trailer to help with the braking, convinced me of that. Also you can help prevent sway by applying the trailer brakes with the controller. 2000+lbs behind you will increase your stopping distances a lot, and put increased wear on your truck brakes.

[jim44646]

Well let me tell you a story. A while back we were out for the week. Everything was going well but under my truck this little thing called rust was working. I was backing in to hitch my TT when I touched my brake peddle and nothing. Looking under my truck I seen a large puddle under rear Axel, brake fluid. Brake line blew. What was I to do? Sunday afternoon no place open. Then it dawned on me, Trailer brakes. I hitched up TT added a little more stopping power to TT brakes. Manually used trailer brakes to bring me home to where I could get it into a local shop that I new wouldn't rip me off. I wouldn't recommend this for a 100 mi trip, it worked for 50mi. but it will get you safely some place. This would also worked on my popup

[BlueBrick]

I had to remove the center console to be able to drill the holes for the wiring in the lower part of dash and makes more room for installing the mount. A little time consuming, but worth it in my opinion as it looks a lot neater and it's not down where it's hard to reach and my right leg would hit it.

[jim44646]

Nice install. Allot of thought went into it.