Tekonsha Primus Brake Controller Review
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Review of a Tekonsha Primus Brake Controller
Today we are going to show you part number 20188 from Tekonsha. This is the Tekonsha Primus electronic brake controller. What this is, it is a proportional brake controller, which means basically it senses how hard you are hitting the brakes on your truck via a little sensor inside of here. Basically, the farther sensor moves forward the more current goes out to your trailer, matching how hard you are pushing on the brakes on your vehicle. What you get in the box is, obviously, the brake controller itself, two different styles of brackets this one is a quick release, so if you want you can actually trade this brake controller between two different vehicles. This also has a permanent mount bracket here, so if you are going leave it one vehicle it will stay there, so this will be perfect plus it takes up a little bit less room underneath the dash.
Speaking of quick disconnects, this has a quick disconnect harness which plugs into the back of the Primus brake controller. And the rest of it gets wired into your tow package port, or you just hardwire it to the battery. And the stoplight switch and the blue wire go out back to your trailer, of course. It also comes with a package of mounting screws to assemble the brake controller to your dash and also an informational DVD to tell you about it.
First off, we will you the quick disconnect. Pretty simple, really. It just plugs into the back of it, and you push down and it snaps into place. Obviously, the rest gets hooked onto your towing vehicle. And when you want to disconnect it, you just pull the little tab out and then you take this out and put it in the glove box or, again, you can trade it with another vehicle. And this is one of the brackets for the brake controller the quick release. Basically, it just snaps over the brake controller and holds it just like that.
Now we are going to apply some power to it and show you how it works. All right, we have applied power to our brake controller, and you can see here it shows a letter C, showing it is connected. And what you have here is a button on the side. That is the manual override. What this does is apply power to the brakes themselves, bypassing the inertia on the brake controller itself. On the side here is the gain knob right here, and what that does is control the amount of current that the brake controller can use for braking. All the way forward is full power, and all the way down is back to zero. And also what is nice about this brake controller is that it is proportional but it is not self-leveling. Basically what happens is initially you just set the brake controller at whatever angle you need, and what you do is use this lever here and point that down basically straight to the floor of the vehicle. The sensor knows which way is down. Now, what is nice about that is that for advanced users you can actually make the sensitivity of the inertia sensor either more or less just by moving it from front to rear. That way you can actually fine-tune it even a little bit more than you can, say, with the other brake controllers that are self-leveling and fully automatic. And this brake controller can be mounted from zero to 70 degrees, also. And there you have it for part number 20188, the Tekonsha Primus electric brake controller.
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Brake Controller InformationBrake Controller Installation from ScratchInstallation Guide - 2008 Chevy Silverado and GMC SierraInstallation Guide - 97-06 Ford F-150, 99-04 F-250/F-350 Super DutyInstallation Guide - 05-06 Ford Super DutyInstallation Guide - Dodge PickupsInstallation Guide - Chevrolet / GMC 1999-2006 PickupsBrake Control Wiring for 2007 and 2008 GM TruckQuestions and Answers
