Today, were going to take a brief look at the Titan zinc plated brake actuator for drum brakes, part number T4339720. A hydraulic brake actuator works to synchronize your vehicle brakes and your trailer brakes. As you apply the brakes in the two vehicle, the trailer will lean forward against the vehicle and it will push against the ball. This internal piece will slide in and activate the master cylinder and apply brake pressure, but well go over more on that in a minute.This coupler is made of steel and zinc plated to help protect against corrosion. You want to make sure that you dont use this on a trailer with disc brakes, as it doesnt have quite enough pressure to operate disc brakes.The coupler is designed to work with 1-7/8, 2-inch, and 50-millimeter balls. It has a hand-wheel latch system for tightening around the ball.
To loosen, we depress this lever and we can rotate the hand knob counterclockwise to loosen from the trailer ball. We release the lever and turn the knob clockwise and it will ratchet into place around the ball.Well go ahead and show you that now with an actual 2-inch trailer ball. Ill hold the latch down and turn the wheel counterclockwise to open the latch, fit our ball into place, and as we tighten the hand knob clockwise this wedge will tighten around the ball. Depress the latch and rotate counterclockwise and we can remove our ball. Now you may have to adjust it depending on what size ball youre using, and you can do that via this bolt here.While were looking at the underside, well go over the braking system.
This inner piece of the coupler when braking will push back and activate our master cylinder here, which will send pressure through the line that youll connect back here to your drum brakes.This coupler is designed to work with 3-inch wide channel tongues, and theres our 3 inch inside dimension. On the back here, youll notice theres an electric solenoid with two wire leads. One of these wire leads youll ground to the trailer frame and the other one youll connect to the reverse light circuit on your trailers connector. This operates so that when youre backing up the vehicle this brake actuator is locked out and it cant apply pressure, that way you can back up with ease.Theres a breakaway handle on the top here. Youll connect this steel cable to your vehicle, so if the trailer does come uncoupled or detached from the vehicle this cable will pull on the lever and itll activate the braking system to stop the trailer.
Up on top is the fill cap for adding brake fluid to the system. When you install this, you do want to make sure to bleed the brakes so that both sides properly operate.This is a bolt-on style and there are a pair of bolt holes that are spaced 3 inches apart on either side of the coupler. Overall, from the tip of the shroud that covers our solenoid to the front of the brake actuator measures about 23 inches. The actuator has a gross trailer weight capacity of 6,000 pounds and a maximum tongue weight of 600 pounds. Titan covers this actuator with a one-year warranty.
Thats it for our quick look at the Titan zinc plated brake actuator for drum brakes, part number T4339720. .
This Old Boat Trailer: Master Cylinder Installation
Today on This Old Boat Trailer we are going to rebuild the hydraulic actuator on here and we are going to be using part number 85841, the master cylinder itself, and then we are going to use a master cylinder replacement cap part number A87478, and the cable push rod replacement kit part number 85852, all from Atwood. The first thing we need to do is remove the old master cylinder itself. This is going to require taking off the cap which we have already done. We have disconnected the line back here already and then we can see our factory line, lets disconnect that and then we are just going to undo these four bolts right here. There is probably going to be some leftover brake fluid in there so it will be a good idea to wear some gloves or something. We are going to pull out the back and then underneath there is a little push rod you may want to pull away from it too to help knock it out. 01:09
This Old Trailer: Installation of a Trailer Coupler
Today on This Old Trailer we are going to install a brand new coupler using part number 2836AT from Master Lock. This is going to be a three inch wide coupler on it and in between here is going to be three inches wide and it is going to use a two inch ball. The first steps involved are to remove the old coupler. It has been on there for awhile. It is rusted so take a couple of wrenches to it and maybe we will get lucky and we will actually break the bolts and get it to come loose that way. This little stand right here got bent back, probably pinching the coupler, so we are going to take that one apart too. Obviously this is rusted in place so we are going to have to persuade it off. 00:59
Replacing A Hydraulic Coupler Demonstration
Today we are going to show you how to replace a hydraulic coupler. In this case this one is damaged and is going to get replaced by a totally different model. First thing we are going to do is actually drain all the fluid from the master cylinder. And what we are actually going to do is open up one of the wheel cylinders and pump our fluid out and into a holding container. All right we will go to the wheel cylinder now and attach a rubber line to the bleeder valve and get our container ready. What we will do is take the cover off our bleeder valve here and we will go ahead and open it up. Okay, here we just take a rubber hose and just slide it on to the bleeder valve itself. All right and then we will just run the other half of the hose into an empty container here and start draining the fluid out of the master cylinder.
