NO BRAKES!!!I need trailer help please

Hi Guys, After picking up my 38 ft gooseneck from CA I slammed on the brakes to avoid an accident in Oaklahoma city and not long after that bedded down for the night. When I woke up the trailer had almost no brakes and the truck seems fine. I had the brakes on the truck checked out when I got back and they are fine though they got hot from stopping a 7500 lb trailer.

I fixed a busted wire on the trailer and a busted ground and still nothing.

I have electric brakes on the trailer, A Tekonsha solid state controller (Old non digital)

When I first touch the brake pedal a little bit the trailer brakes grab hard but as soon as I push the pedal down to get the truck working it's like my trailer brakes just stop working. When I pull the lever on the controller with the truck idling down the road the trailer brakes barely work as well. Also I don't know if it matters but when I hit the brakes the lever does not move on my controller though it didn't when it was working fine either.

Truck is a California 94" Chevy 1 Ton dually w/ a 454/Auto. Trailer is a ??? 93" 38ft steel enclosed gooseneck. My pigtail is a little 5 or 6 prong style.

Any and all help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Spc. Trevor Sherwood
U.S. Army
Soldierboy0098@yahoo.com
616-642-6009

 

brakes

i would say without looking at them that the shoe life and drum life might be ok but you might have glazed the drums and shoes over that they are so slick there is no friction but only a guess without looking at the trailer myself

 

Most trailer brakes are not self adjusting so as you use them they get looser until eventually they don't work at all. Mine require periodic adjustments if I want any help at all from them. Dave Germain

 

I have just delt with the same problem. You need to find out how many amps the brake controller will handle. Then find out how many amps each trailer brake needs. Then check all of the magnets on the trailer brakes. On my trailer each magnet hums so it is easy to figure out if they all work or not. In my case I had a bad wire and a bad magnet so the brakes worked when they wanted to.

 

After having to had work for years on so many trailers with electric brakes that I gave up counting here's my .02, since you just got the trailer pull all the tires, hub's, and brake drums off, and check everything, clean, repack the bearings, replace all the seals on the hubs, if the brake shoes are thinner than a 1/8th" replace them all, have the pigtail of the trailer hooked to the truck have someone hold the brakes on the truck if the magnets are still good you should be able to hear a slight buzz sound from the magnets, either that or see if it sticks to metal. On some brands of electric brakes it's cheaper to just replace the backing plate with the brakes all ready assembled than just buying the brake shoes.
If it were my trailer I'd pull all the hubs clean, replace seals, and bearings as necessary, then just replace all the shoes, magnets, and replace or have the drums turned, then you know yourself that all the bearings, and all the brakes
are good, better to all that in your shop than on the side of the highway.