Video Transcript for All You Need to Know About the Kodiak Disc Brakes

Speaker 1: Today we're going to be taking a look at the Kodiak line of Disc Brake Kits. Now, these kits are available in multiple configurations to fit multiple size axles. They're also available in several different finishes.A disc brake kit like this one from Kodiak is an excellent solution to give us good braking force. Typically, for this kit anyway, you're looking at like a 3500-pound axle. A lot of boat applications, you're hauling a boat sometimes miles and miles and miles, and without brakes on your trailer, you put a lot of unnecessary stress and strain on your truck. A braking kit like this allows us to take the stress, the strain off the braking system on our truck but also gives us a safer ride.In this application we've got a surge coupler at the front of the trailer, so as the truck slows it applies the hydraulic fluid pressure, squeezing our caliper together giving us excellent stopping abilities.

The rotors, calipers, and the ceramic pads are all automotive grade, so they're going to be made to the highest standards being sure we get excellent braking capabilities.Now when we compare a disc brake kit like this to a hydraulic drum-style brake, there are several advantages. Of course, we all know disc brakes tend to work better than drum brakes. They lock up less. We typically don't have the moisture being held inside. Especially in a marine application, that hub fills up with water, that moisture stays inside, causes some corrosion issues.

In this situation, once we bring these out of the water, everything's going to drain away. Air can get to it very readily and dry everything up.Another advantage we're going to get with this particular kit over the other disc brake kits available, the material composition is very corrosion-resistant. Our rotor, caliper, all stainless steel, plus they take that a step further, put a Dacramet finish all the way around. So that's going to work out really well, especially in a marine application like this, but also just on a utility trailer, keeping everything nice, corrosion-free. It's also going to be an excellent, excellent choice if you use it in a saltwater-type application.Something else you'll notice, pretty common on automobile applications, not usually on trailers, is going to be the ventilated rotor here.

So you've got two wear surfaces here and here. Those are going to be separated to allow air to flow freely in there and get everything cooled off to give us premium braking performance every time we hit those brakes.All right. With the bracket installed, we can move onto installing our rotor. That's one of the big benefits I like about this kit. You don't have the whole disc with the hub assembly in it.

So if you ever need to replace the disc, you're just replacing the disc, not your entire hub. This is going to fit right on our idler hub just like that, very common on automobile applications. They call this more like a top hat rotor where it it slides over your lugs, and then your wheel is actually going to hold that in and flush.Next, we'll move on to getting our caliper installed. Now the calipers can go either side. You don't have to have a left and a right. You can see we've got a bleeder screw on both sides. We want, of course, for our hydraulic connection to be facing in. Our slide bolts are going to come in this way just like that, and then these two portions are going to go on the back side of our bracket. So we slide that over, bring it in, and then we'll just push our bolts in, line them up with our holes and get them started. Now those do have loctite on them, so you'll just get them started a little bit, and then we'll use a 13mm socket and snug them on down.Now that we've got those snugged down, we'll use our torque wrench and we're going to torque them down to the specifications listed in the instructions. With our brake assemblies in place, it's time at this point to install our tire back on. Now, we do recommend using a torque wrench and torquing these down properly per the 1/2" stud application. Something we've seen, especially in the automobile industry, if you tighten these lug nuts down too much, you might cause that rotor to warp a little, decreasing your performance. That's going to complete our look at the Kodiak line of Disc Brake Kits.