Tekonsha Voyager Trailer Brake Controller w/ Custom Harness - 1 to 4 Axles - Proportional
This item does not fit your vehicle
1997 Ford Ranger
These items fit your vehicle
1997 Ford Ranger
To see if this custom-fit item will work for you please tell us what vehicle you'll use it with.
This proportional brake controller is designed to keep towing simple. Includes an LED braking indicator, a slide-bar manual override, and a knob to adjust braking power. Mounts easily within a 90-degree vertical range.
Features:
Specs:
Once the brake controller is installed, you can use the knob on the right side of the unit to adjust the gain (also known as output). Gain lets you set the maximum amount of power that will be applied to your trailer's brakes. You want to set it as high as you can without locking up the brakes. Typically, this setting is only readjusted when you experience changing road conditions or if you switch over from a heavy, loaded trailer to a much lighter, empty trailer, or vice versa.
You can fine-tune the gain by adjusting the sensitivity of the internal sensor using the knob on the left side. This controls the aggressiveness of your trailer's braking, meaning how quickly the brakes reach the maximum braking level. You can adjust this when you're towing heavy loads and you need more umph to bring your trailer to a stop. Your tow vehicle doesn't need that much power to brake in time, but your heavy trailer does. A high sensitivity level will get the braking power to your trailer brakes faster and with more intensity so that it doesn't push your tow vehicle forward.
LED Indicator
Keeping with its simple design, the Voyager will not overwhelm you with information. An LED indicator on the top of the unit lights up green to show that your trailer is securely connected to your tow vehicle. The LED indicator will change to red when the brakes on your trailer are activated.
During installation and setup, this light is also used to ensure that the Voyager will be able to function correctly. Proper leveling of the internal sensor is crucial to the operation of this brake controller. When the sensor is level, the LED will change to a shade of orange.
The Voyager is designed to be mounted in your cab at a vertical angle that is between -20 degrees and 70 degrees. The brake controller needs to be horizontally level and parallel to the direction of travel in order to function properly.
To connect the Voyager, just plug the included harness into your vehicle. The other end plugs into the controller - no hardwiring required.
Once the controller is mounted and connected, you must level the internal sensor. First, set the overall power to the maximum using the knob on the side of the controller. Then, while pressing the tow vehicle's brake pedal, adjust the level knob on the other side of the brake controller (this is the same knob that is used to fine-tune the power output) until the LED monitor is a shade of orange.
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).
The Tekonsha Voyager brake controller comes equipped with proportional braking to give you the best towing experience. Proportional braking means that your trailer brakes mimic your tow vehicle's brakes. If you slam on the brakes in your vehicle, 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 Voyager uses a pendulum system to sense 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.
Alternate Instructions
California residents: click here
Videos are provided as a guide only. Refer to manufacturer installation instructions and specs for complete information.
Today on our 2001 Ford Ranger, we're going to install part number 39510. This is the Tekonsha Voyager Trailer Brake Controller. To help us with our install, we'll be using 2 other part numbers. We'll also be using part number ETBC7, the Universal Installation Kit for Trailer Brake Controllers, and also a bracket to mount our 7-Pole Connector. This will be part number 18136. We'll start off with that part number.
To give us a little extra working room and eventually we'll need to use our 4-Pole flap, we'll go ahead and just loosen it up from the bumper. These we'll get out of our way for now. Let's take our bracket and put it over the hitch and then take our clamp and put it through the bracket and around the hitch. Run it back through the clamp. To start it, we'll use a 5/16ths bit to go ahead and tighten down the clamp. We'll go ahead and install our 7-Pole bracket from the ETBC7 Kit.
We'll use the hardware that came with our long bracket to attach it. We'll take our 7-Pole and add it to our bracket, then we'll use the hardware that comes with the install kit for the Brake Controller, but we'll use that hardware to attach it. We'll go ahead and start working with our first connection. We're actually going to take the 4-Pole that comes from our 7-Pole and attach to our preexisting 4-Pole here. Our new one has a jacket around it, so we're going to have to basically cut it and carve it up so it will fit inside of this one.
Now we can go ahead and start connecting wires. Since this is going to be a semi-permanent connection, we'll go ahead and use some dielectric grease to help protect the contacts. We'll be using part number 11755. I'm actually going to push my wires over the hitch and plug them together. Push them together and we'll use some tape for additional protection. Next, we'll work with our white and purple wires.
Our white wire will be a ground. We'll eventually run that to the frame to make our ground connection. Our purple wire will be an auxiliary circuit. Typically it's used for reverse lights or any other circuits you'd like. However, in this case, this will not be used. I'm going to go ahead and run a few loose wraps of tape around it to help keep the 2 together and then we'll go ahead and run it along the frame and ground it. We'll keep our purple wire towards the back a little bit in case it ever needs to be used. We'll have easy access. We'll go ahead and take our wire and run it over the hitch, then back to the outside of the frame. We'll go ahead and ground it about right here. We'll use the large self-tapping screw that comes with the Brake Control Install Kit and ground it to the frame. Our last 2 wires are our blue and black. We'll take these 2 wires and connect them to the gray cable that comes with the kit. The cable has a black wire which we'll match up to black, then our white wire will eventually go back to blue for output for our Brake Controller, and our black wire will provide a 12 volt power supply for our 7-Pole connector. That circuit will be used for anything you want to power on a trailer. Let's go ahead and get our cable ready. We'll take the sheath off and get to the wires. We'll go ahead and strip them back and then attach them to our wires. Let's go ahead and use some tape to help protect our connections. Now we'll take our other end of our cable and we're going to follow it through with the rest of the wiring. We'll leave our gray cable alone for now and we'll take a moment to bundle up our wires right behind the 7-Pole connector and secure them behind the bumper as well. We'll put some tape around our wires and then use some of the loom that comes with the kit, to help keep it all together. Now, we got our gray wire started right behind the bumper and supported. Now we'll go ahead and continue with that gray wire, pulling up towards the front of the truck and into our power supply. As we run it up to the front, we want to make sure we stay away from anything moving like suspension components or anything hot like the exhaust. When we get towards the front, we want to stay away from the steering components as well. Here's our gray line we ran up back into the side of the frame and basically we followed the factory wiring where it goes through the cross members inside the frame. We went over stuff to help keep it up and out of the way and through the cross members of the frame. I was able to run it all the way through up towards the front and in our four wheel drive truck until we got to the transfer case. We used a zip tie here to attach to the factory wire harness and we just continued on, and right behind it, or just a little forward, the frame turns into a box and I was able to run it out a hole right here. Then, we'll use something to pull our gray cable up with. We'll take our gray wire and run it behind these lines and then eventually we'll go ahead and run it towards the top. We'll use something to help pull the wire up from the bottom to the top. To help pull our wire up, we're using an old piece of air line tubing. This also could be a piece of wire or something that holds its shape when you push it down. Here's our wire pull. We'll attach our gray cable to it and pull it back up. We'll go ahead and pull it up and then we'll go ahead and tie it off to help keep it supported. We need to go ahead and cut our cable to length. We need enough cable to go out to our power supply as well as enough cable to go to the inside of the vehicle to our Brake Controller. We'll go ahead and, on the outside of the truck, just measure roughly to the edge of our dashboard and then we'll go ahead and cut it off. Now, this extra piece, don't throw away because we'll need this to go between our Brake Controller and our power supply as well. Now we'll go ahead and split our cable. Let's get rid of our sheath. Now we'll go ahead and take our white wire and we're just going to put it off to the side for now. Dont need to worry about that. Remember our black wire will be a 12 volt power supply for anything on the trailer. This needs to go to the positive side of the battery. In this case, the battery's kind of corroded up. We can go back here to our power distribution box and we can use this for power as well. Using the tester that comes with the kit we'll just verify our power. We'll clamp one end to ground and then we'll check our post here. With the key out of the ignition, we've got constant power right here, so we'll use that. Between our black wire and our power supply we need to install a 40 amp circuit breaker. Now we need to find a location for our circuit breaker. I think we'll install it to the sheet metal right here. We'll go ahead and take our black wire and cut it to length. It's always good to have a little extra. We'll cut it and wire one of the small ring terminals to it. We'll save our other half of our wire, because we'll need that in a moment. Small ring terminal. We'll go ahead and attach our wire to the silver post. Power going into a circuit breaker will always be the copper post. Let's grab the other half of our wire, add another small ring terminal, and that will go to our other post in our circuit breaker. Then we'll go ahead and run that up to our post for power and we'll cut it to length, and we'll go ahead and add one of the large ring terminals. That will go onto our post. We'll actually make that connection as one of the last things we do, so we'll set that out to the side and we'll go ahead and tighten up our connections on our circuit breaker. We'll use a 3/8ths socket for this. Now we'll go ahead and find a way to run our white wire to the inside of the vehicle for eventual connection to our Brake Controller. Now, we're going to use the grommet for the parking brake cable. We're going to cut across the top of it to create a slit. Now we're going to use our same piece of air line as we did before. We'll go ahead and run this through the grommet and we'll use it to pull all our wires through. We'll go ahead and just connect our wire to our pull wire and also we'll connect our gray cable. We'll pull all that back through to the inside of the cab. Make sure you have enough wire leftover to go for our circuit breaker for your Brake Controller and back to our power supply. Now we know how much cable we have, let's go ahead and set it out of our way. We'll add our second circuit breaker for our Brake Controller. In this case, we'll be using the 20 amp circuit breaker. We'll overlap it with our existing one. Let's go ahead and we'll strip back our sheath off our wire to get down to our circuit breaker and then onto our power supply. We'll go ahead and work with our black wire once again and we'll add 2 small ring terminals. This wire will eventually go to our Brake Controller, so we'll connect it to a silver post. Our other half of our wire will get another small ring terminal and we'll go to the other post. We'll take our other end of our black wire and we'll attach a large ring terminal, so at this point we should have 2 of the same. Our white wire will go to ground, so we'll put a large ring terminal on there. We can actually go ahead and connect that now to a factory ground located right here. Now we'll go to the inside of the truck and start making our connections to our wires. First, we'll go ahead and cut them to length and get them ready to work with. We're almost ready to start working with our Brake Controller. Now, a Brake Controller comes with some wires and a port at the end. To connect our new wires that we added to the truck to the port, we're going to use part number 7894. This is the Pigtail Wiring Harness for Tekonsha and DrawTite Brake Controllers. We'll go ahead and plug those 2 together and we have our other bare ends to catch our other bare wires. We'll some of the leftover loom material to help control our wires underneath the dash. We'll use our butt connectors that come off our wire harness here. Let's go ahead and work with 1 wire at time. Back to our single white wire, we'll put a large butt connector on it, and this is the white wire we told you eventually go back to blue on our Brake Controller. For our black and white wires that are bundled together, they'll hook up to the wire harness color for color. I'm going to use an extra yellow butt connector, large size, for our last black wire, because we ran out with the wire harness for our Brake Controller. This butt connector came from the ETBC7 Installation Kit. The last wire we have to work with is our red wire from our Brake Controller. This needs to hook up to the cold side of our brake switch which means when we hit the brake pedal, the wire gets hot, so we need to follow our brake pedal up to our bundle, so when we hit our brake pedal we have power. In this case, the wire we're using is an all light green wire and to make our connection, we use a quick splice connector. We'll slide this onto the wire we need to tap into and then the red wire next to it and then we pinch down on the metal clip to make our connection and then put the cover over the top. Now we can go ahead and start mounting our Brake Controller to the dash of our truck. We'll go ahead and put our bracket, hold it in place, and find a location. We'll go ahead and put it about in this spot right here. We'll use one of the sheet metal screws that come with the kit to hold it in place. We'll make sure it's in a straight line, even with the truck, then we'll install the second screw. Now the same screws will go into the side of our Brake Controller, so it may be a good idea to go ahead and run the screws in first. Then we'll go ahead and attach our Brake Controller to our bracket. Now, with that, our Brake Controller is installed on our dash. All we need to do is take our wiring and we'll go ahead and zip tie it and secure it behind the dash. Now we'll go back underneath hood and make our last connection. We'll take our 2 power wires and connect to one of the posts here. With our power all connected to our Brake Controller, we shouldn't have anything light up until we plug in our trailer and when we do, we get a green LED. Now, we'll go ahead and try the manual override on the bottom here. It will go from green to orange and to red. Now the dial on our driver's side controls the level on the inside of the Brake Controller. If you tilt it forward it actually will act more aggressive. If you tilt it back, it will be less aggressive, but the whole Brake Controller is proportional, so when we hit our brakes, you can see how it turns color. In this case, I don't have it too aggressive. If I turn it all the way up, you can see how more aggressive it is and you can dial it anywhere in between. With that, that will finish it for our install of our Brake Controller, part number 39510, the Tekonsha Voyager Brake Controller, on our 2001 Ford Ranger. .
Do you have a question about this Trailer Brake Controller?
Info for this part was:
At etrailer we provide the best information available about the products we sell. We take the quality of our information seriously so that you can get the right part the first time. Let us know if anything is missing or if you have any questions.
Thank you! Your comment has been submitted successfully. You should be able to view your question/comment here within a few days.
Error submitting comment. Please try again momentarily.