trailer brake adjustment

[Komatsu 150]

I would suppose this is also illegal but there is no way to pull an empty without smoking the tires. The driver doesn't always have the option to feather the brakes. We had a driver do a full on emergency stop. He avoided an accident (someone pulled out in front of him) but all eight Michelins on the trailer were junk after that. ABS brakes solve the problem.

 

[mrkw77]

all the pintel trailers i have seen have had brake problems emty all you need to do is install a ball valve on the rite side or blue line line when your emty shut the valve you brake lites will still work. When your loaded open the valve so your brakes work. this said in a nut shell if you spend gobs on valves,reducers,ect to get your brakes to work rite emty they wont help much with a load on.
If you have a lot of D.O.T around you just crack the valve when your emty and the brakes will work. i hope this helps and my advice is time tested.

 

[Hendrik]

I would suppose this is also illegal but there is no way to pull an empty without smoking the tires. The driver doesn't always have the option to feather the brakes. We had a driver do a full on emergency stop. He avoided an accident (someone pulled out in front of him) but all eight Michelins on the trailer were junk after that. ABS brakes solve the problem.

Thems the brakes, O God pardon that pun, anyway yes in a full on braking situation you are going to burn tyres, better that than wiping out a car full of family. Basically truck braking systems are designed for a truck with a load, they don't really work that well without a load. I do not 100% understand how a automatic brake proportioning valve works but I seem to remember it has to do with pressure, the more braking pressure the more braking is applied to the rear axles.
BTW can I work for you? Mickyess on the trailer, lucky to get decent rags on the drive over here.

 

[johndeere123]

Here it is illegal to change a truck or trailer from automatic to manual adjusters. Any truck or trailer made after 1994 I think NEEDS auto adjusters. Not sure about other areas, but you should check before switching them all out.

 

[Birken Vogt]

I would suppose this is also illegal but there is no way to pull an empty without smoking the tires. The driver doesn't always have the option to feather the brakes. We had a driver do a full on emergency stop. He avoided an accident (someone pulled out in front of him) but all eight Michelins on the trailer were junk after that. ABS brakes solve the problem.

From what I can tell it looks like it would be pretty easy to install at least a basic ABS system on any trailer. The Haldex full function valve and computer is all in one, just screw it onto the air tank and run power to it and hook up the red and blue lines and the lines to the chambers. It handles all functions. Power can be from the stop lights if you need to, or continuous. Of course you need to put the warning light somewhere on the trailer. It seems the trickiest part would be installing tone rings and sensors on the hubs. I would think that two would be enough but you could do all four if you wanted to spend more money. I'm sure it's not cheap either way but tires aren't cheap either.

It appears that they used to sell kits specifically to convert old trailers to ABS, but that was in the early 2000s and I guess anyone that wanted to would have done so by now. Or maybe they never sold that well in the first place. However the ones I was looking at are mainly for those building a new trailer from scratch so it wouldn't be much different.

 

[johndeere123]

Most of the trailers i pull have abs, and they will still drag a tire if too much braking power is used empty. The abs doesn't seem to do much for saving the tires. I don't think it would be worth the money and hassle to install ABS. :IMO