To see if this custom-fit item will work for you please tell us what vehicle you'll use it with.
The Tekonsha P2 is a classic brake controller you know you can rely on. It's easy to install, and with the custom harness, it's plug-and-play.
Features:
Specs:
Gain is the maximum amount of power that will be applied to your trailer's brakes. How much braking output you need is determined by the weight of your trailer; a heavier trailer will need more power to bring it to a stop. You want to go as high as you can without the trailer brakes locking up.
You can adjust the gain by turning the thumbwheel on the front of the controller.
The boost setting controls the aggressiveness of your trailer's braking, meaning how quickly the brakes reach the maximum braking level. If your vehicle takes too long to come to a stop, increase the setting. If it stops too abruptly, decrease the setting.
Depending on the level of boost, your trailer brakes can start at either 13 percent or 25 percent of the set gain. So instead of starting at 0, the brakes will start at 25 percent and get to 100 percent sooner. This keeps the trailer from pushing your tow vehicle forward.
Boost Levels:
| Approximate Gross Trailer Weight | Boost Level | Increase in Initial Power Output |
|---|---|---|
| Less than tow vehicle GVW | B1 | 13% |
| Equal to tow vehicle GVW | B1 or B2 | 13% or 25% |
| Up to 25% more than tow vehicle GVW | B2 or B3* | 25% |
| Up to 40% more than tow vehicle GVW | B3* | 25% |
*Both B2 and B3 offer a 25-percent boost in initial power. But the braking curve for B3 is more aggressive than that of B2. This means that, even though you will start out with the same intensity when using these boost levels, you will get an overall more aggressive braking experience with the higher level. So if you use B3, you will reach maximum braking sooner than if you use B2.
To engage the manual override, twist the rotary-style lever from right to left. This will activate the trailer's brakes and brake lights independently of your vehicle, great for stopping sway or controlling your trailer's momentum in an emergency.
The Prodigy P2 offers key safety features to prevent damage to your towing setup:
- Integrated reverse battery protection shields the brake controller and your trailer's breakaway system from shorts.
- When the P2 is not in use, it draws only 3.6 milliamps to minimize the drain on your vehicle's battery.
- Any time your vehicle and trailer are at a standstill with the brakes applied for more than 5 seconds, the hold feature will kick on and reduce power to just 25 percent. This will keep your trailer in place without your brakes overheating.
The Prodigy P2 also runs continuous diagnostics to check for problems as they come up, including:
Installing the P2 is incredibly simple. You'll mount the bracket to your dashboard then mount the unit to the bracket. Plug the custom harness into your vehicle and into the unit. Done!
Keep in mind that the P2 must be horizontally level and parallel with the direction of travel to work correctly.
With a replacement wiring harness (sold separately) and replacement bracket (P7685 - sold separately), you can even transfer the Prodigy P2 to another vehicle.
Note: If you don't already have a 7-way plug at the back of your vehicle, take a look at our exclusive 7- and 4-way brake controller installation kit (ETBC7 - sold separately).
Proportional braking means that your trailer brakes mimic your tow vehicle's brakes. If you slam on the brakes, your trailer brakes will activate with the same intensity; if you brake lightly, your trailer brakes lightly too. The trailer's braking is in proportion to your vehicle's braking. This saves wear and tear on the tires and the brakes on both your vehicle and trailer.
The Prodigy P2 uses an internal inertia sensor to detect how your vehicle is braking so it can send the right amount of braking power to your trailer. It measures the inertia of your tow vehicle and activates the trailer's brakes to slow at the same rate. The result is uniform braking across your towing setup. No push-pull action - just smooth, proportional braking every time.
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Videos are provided as a guide only. Refer to manufacturer installation instructions and specs for complete information.
Today with this 2006 Ford E350 van we're going to install part number 90885. This is the Tekonsha Prodigy P2 trailer brake controller. I'll also be using two other parts to help us with our install. We'll be using part number ETBC7, and also universal mounting bracket part number 18136. We'll start off with that part number first. This is our bracket. We'll go ahead and install it from the backside, over the top of our hitch.
Install our clamp which will go around the hitch and over the top of our bracket and then we'll run the two ends to the clamp. Push the threaded portion back together. Then we'll use a 5/16th bit to tighten this down. Rotate a little bit to help take out some of the tail that have come out. A little bit access tail. It'll fold up and hide it behind the hitch. Now, eventually we'll need to work with or four pull wire harness.
We'll need to get this out of the way for now. Now we'll go ahead and take our bracket that comes with ETBC7 kit that holds the seven pull connector. We're going to install it this way to help take up some of the distance. We'll take the screws that come with or bracket. Put those into place. Mount our seven pull bracket to these screws. Now I'll go ahead and continue working with our parts with the ETBC7 kit.
We'll take our seven pull and install it into our bracket. This is or seven pull here and a for pull on the side. We'll use the hardware that comes with this to attach it to the bracket. Now we can go ahead and start making some electrical connections. Our four pull from our seven pull connector will direct you to the pre-existing for pull. Then what we'll do is we'll go ahead and route the wires behind the hitch and we'll go ahead and connect them together there.
We'll use some dielectric grease to help protect our connections because this will be a semi-permanent connection. We'll be using part number 11755. Push the two ends together and use some electrical tape to help seal it up. Next two wires to work with will be our white wire for ground and our purple wire for auxiliary circuit. Typically this could be used for our reverse light lead or any additional circuit. We'll take our ground wire and we'll attach it to the bottom of the frame right here. We'll be using a large self-tapping screw that actually comes with the kit. With the end of our purple wire stay about right here. Next we'll go ahead and work with our blue and black wires. Our blue wire will be used for our output for our brake controller. Our black wire will be for a constant 12 volt power supply from the battery. Add to those two wires we'll be using this grey cable right here. Now, you can see how our two wires don't quite match up. Black will go to black, and our white wire will go to blue. We'll go and strip these wires back and go ahead and make our connections to our wires from the seven pull. Let's go ahead and add some additional protection to our butt connectors with some electrical tape. Now, we'll run our grey cable in the same fashion we did for our first wires over the hitch. We'll take a few moments to bundle up our wires and secure them behind the hitch. We'll go ahead and add some of the loom material that comes with the kit to help the dress the wires to the outside. Let's go ahead and route our wires up behind the hitch now. Then we'll go ahead and secure it behind the crossmember right here with a zip tie. We'll cut off our tail from the zip tie. Then we'll continue on running our grey cable up towards the front of the vehicle and underneath the hood of the van. Now, as we run our wire up front we're going to basically run it alongside the frame. We want to stay away from anything moving like suspension components or anything hot like exhaust. Once we get to the front of the vehicle we want to stay away from the steering components as well. Now we took a wire and we ran it through the crossmembers, any openings with zip ties, to the frame using existing holes. Just basically follow it along the frame rail. Up the other rear suspension and fill along the frame rail with zip tie. Behind the shield here, route it up underneath this fuel line her, behind the shield, then came up and over the top of it, and then where this junction boxe is right here, We went underneath and over the top. Eventually our wire will go this way. At this point we already ran out of zip ties so it's always a good idea to buy extra zip ties whenever you do wiring. Now, to help pull our wire up from the bottom of the van up towards the top we're going to be using an old piece of airline tubing. This also could be a stiff piece of wire that can hold its shape. Let's go ahead and route it down. We can use its flexibility to help kind of guide it a little bit down to our wires underneath. To pull the wire from the bottom to the top we'll go ahead and use our airline tubing and just tape it to our wire that we're going to pull up. Let's go ahead and pull our wires up. We'll go ahead and take our wire. We'll pull it up. We'll take up our slack and we'll go ahead and zip tie this wire harness here that's on the van. We cut off the tail from our zip tie and then we'll continue on routing this over to our battery. We'll find out how much length we need first. Now we'll go ahead and cut off our excess. Now, depending on how you run your wires and the length of the van you may need an extra grey cable. If you do you can use part number ETBCXW. Now we'll go ahead and strip the sheath of our cable. We'll go ahead and split apart our black and white wires. We'll take our white wire and keep it over on the driver side. Then we'll go ahead and route our black wire across and over to our battery. Now, our black wire is going to provide a 12 volt power supply at the seven pull connector. Remember, our white wire will be our output from our brake controller. Before we connect this up to the battery we need to install a circuit breaker. Typically you want to keep the circuit breaker as close to the battery as possible. You typically want to attach this in a sheet metal or something else that scurry. In this case where we really don't have too many options, what we're going to do is actually just zip tie it to this wire right here. When we're done working with it we'll just go ahead and just tilt it down all the way and it should be safe that way. Now, the circuit breaker we're using will be our 40 amps circuit breaker for this. Now, we'll go ahead and make a cut on our black wire and attach a small green terminal to each side. We'll take this end of our wire that goes out to our seven pull connector and we'll attach it to the silver post on our circuit breaker. Then the lead from our battery will go to the copper post. Then we'll use a 3/8th socket to go ahead and tighten them down. We'll just go ahead and rotate it out of the way. We'll continue on over our black wire. It will connect to the battery at this point here. We'll cut off our excess of our wire then attach one of the larger ring terminals. We'll use a 10 millimeter socket on this nut then attach our ring terminal. Now our white wire we're going to need to run through the inside of the vehicle. To do that we need to pull back the carpet and get access to the grommet where this cable is going through. What we're going to do is just make a small slit in the grommet towards the top and then we're going to use our airline tubing one more time to push it through and then draw back our white wire. One we have enough through we'll go ahead back underneath the hood and connect the white wire to our pull wire. We can see where our pull wire comes out of the grommet right here. We're looking in the fender well by our front suspension. We'll go ahead and route our pull wire back up into the engine compartment. Then pull the wire back in. Once we got our wire pulled out we'll go ahead and cut off our excess. Then we can go ahead and start hooking up to our van. Now, a lot of these vans have a tow package 12:21 that's underneath. Even though it doesn't have a four pull connector or a seven pull connector at the back, they do have a connector for a brake controller port. Sometimes there is two of them. Look for the one port that has a blue wire. We'll go ahead and pull it out right here. This is our port right here. One, you can go ahead and just cut this end off. You can hardwire direct. We'd use everything but the blue wire because that's why we have this white wire because our blue wire doesn't go all the way to the outside and out back. Or you could use an adapter cord that's made for Ford tow packages. We'll be using part number 3035-P which is a little modification. This is the end that goes into the back of our Prodigy P2 brake controller. We'll leave that end alone. What we're going to modify is this end right here. We're going to take a blue wire and cut it short. Then we'll go ahead and connect our blue wire back to our white wire which will go to the blue wire on our seven pull connector. We're going to have this go into our brake controller. Our blue wire output will go to our white wire. Then eventually out to our seven pull connector and trailer. Let's go ahead and use one of the butt connectors that comes with the ETBC7 kit and make a permanent connection here. Let's go ahead and take this end and plug in to our toe package. Let's go ahead and take a moment to attach our pocket for our brake controller. We're going to put them on this position right here and we'll use the sheet metal screw to hold it in place against the dash. When we put our pocket up we want to make sure it's not twisted this way. If you rotate this way, just fine, but it has to be straight this way. Now, we'll go ahead and take our cable, run through the bottom of our pocket, and then we'll take our brake controller and plug into it. We plug it in. We can already tell it's got power going to it. Let's go ahead and snap it into place. We will take a few moments to go ahead and secure our wires underneath. We got our thing mounted up, let's go ahead and check it out. We'll move our manual override over. You can see where it says NC for no connection. 1 over a dot shows us that we have power going to our brake controller and the other one shows we have a boost setting engaged. The boost button is right here. We can scroll through B1, B2, B3, or no boost at all. Then you just have one dot. We'll put it back to the way it was originally. Now we'll go ahead and hook up our trailer to the back of it and test it off that way. With the trailer hooked up we'll go ahead and try the manual override. As we move over you can see how it scrolls through the numbers. Then we'll go ahead and hit the brake pedal. That'll show we have a signal coming from the foot brake to the brake controller. You should only get a small set of numbers. With that it looks like everything is working. With everything working that'll finish it for our install. That'll do it for part number 908850, the Tekonsha Prodigy P2 brake controller, the ETBC7 installation kit, our brake control adapter cord part number 3035-P, and our long bracket part number 18136 on our 2006 Ford van E350. .
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