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The Tekonsha P3 is a brake controller beloved for its reliability and useability. You're able to save your settings and multiple profiles. It's easy to install, and with the custom harness, it's plug-and-play.
Features:
Specs:
Braking output 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.
Use the arrow buttons on the front of the module to set the output.
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 braking output. 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 P3 is able to store your settings in multiple profiles so that you can have them ready to go for different trailers and drivers. Even the display is super customizable: you can change the screen color, brightness, and language to make it easy to use.
The P3 makes it easy to troubleshoot problems as they come up, with comprehensible and detailed diagnostics displayed on the screen.
Diagnostic troubleshooting messages include:
Diagnostic warning signs include:
The Prodigy P3 offers advanced safety features to prevent damage to various components of your towing setup.
-Integrated reverse battery protection shields the brake controller and your trailer's breakaway system from shorts.
-When the P3 is not in use, it draws only 3.6 milliamps, minimizing 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.
Installing the P3 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 P3 must be horizontally level and parallel with the direction of travel to work correctly.
With a replacement wiring harness (sold separately) and replacement bracket (TK5906 - sold separately), you can even transfer the Prodigy P3 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 and trailer.
The Prodigy P3 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.
Alternate Instructions
California residents: click here
Videos are provided as a guide only. Refer to manufacturer installation instructions and specs for complete information.
Hi there Ram owners. Today in your 2006 Ram 1500, we're going to be taking a look at and showing you how to install Tekonsha's Prodigy P3 Trailer Brake Controller.Our customer has recently been hauling his Winnebago here, and you can see this big old trailer, and this is what he's been using to haul it here, this old impulse brake controller. He's been having a lot of issues with the brakes applying too hard, they're just abrupt, this is an old time-delay model. He just doesn't like the way it feels. He gets a lot of issues with the way it porpoises from applying a little bit too hard, especially just going around parking lots and things like that, it's even more noticeable.So we're going to get this old nasty wiring he's got and get this guy out of here, and get him something a little more modern that's going to smooth out his towing experience.Tekonsha's Prodigy P3 Brake Controller is a premium brake controller that has pretty much every option that you would want. It works with trailers that have one to four axles and provides you with some extra features that many of the other ones don't.
This is a proportional brake controller, which means the harder you stop, the harder it is going to apply the brakes on your trailer. You can set the output with the buttons here on the left to choose the amount of power going to the brakes, the maximum output.And then on the right here, the little lightning bolt symbol here is for our boost setting, and this is going to tweak the strategy of the inertia sensor inside to make the system a little bit more responsive. And it's mainly used for when you have a heavier trailer, so currently we've got it off, but if we had a trailer that was pretty close to the weight of our truck, still less than our truck or pretty close, we would go into the boost one setting to help make the brakes a little more aggressive for that extra weight. If our trailer was roughly the same weight, we would want to use the boost two. And when your trailer weighs more than your truck, you want to go into the boost three setting to help compensate for that.You can also turn it off, or if you've got just something real light and you don't need it.
The boost button also works for reverse lockout for when you're backing up, if you don't want to activate the brakes then, it makes it easier when parking. Hold the break down, and then hold down the boost button, and then you can see we're in reverse mode as it's flashing there.I'm going to undo the button to take it out of reverse mode, but it will come out of reverse mode by itself after a few minutes. If we hold the boost button down, when not pressing on the brakes, that's going to open up our trailer menu where we can choose between five different trailer settings. And this is really nice if you've got multiple trailers, especially if you've got one maybe that's a smaller trailer that has electric brakes on it, and you've got a really big trailer that you have electric over hydraulic. You'd be able to set the profiles up for these to have the proper amount of power for that particular trailer, as well as the particular type it is.Now we can see here, if we hit the little booklet button, you can adjust your display settings.
And right here at break type is where you can choose whether you have electric or electric over hydraulic brakes, which is really nice that it has that feature. A lot of the other models are really just designed for electric brakes, but this one here is going to handle pretty much any trailer you need to hook it up to.On bottom, you have your manual slide, so you can apply the brakes manually. This is nice for testing out the system, and also if your trailer starts to sway, you can just kind of bump the brakes and that makes your trailer want to slow down, but you still don't because you didn't actually hit the brakes in your vehicle, and it kind of makes you want to separate, but you can't separate, you're connected together, so it puts you in a nice straight line again.Now that we've covered some of the features of our brake controller, why don't you follow along with me and we'll show you how to get it installed.We'll begin our installation underneath the dash by finding our factory connector so we can plug in our harness that's going to go to our brake controller. On the driver's side, underneath the dash, over here by the kick panel, kind of straight behind where your parking brake pedal is, you'll find this blue connector here right next to this computer module. That's where we're going to plug our new harness into.
Just line up the release connector right there with the little slot there, pushing the two together until they click into place. And we've now got our wiring done for us.We can now mount up our brake controller. Our customer wanted his brake controller here in this location, so we're going to put it right down here. We're just going to use the screws that they come included with here to get them mounted up. We're just going to line up the screw where we want to mount it here at the bottom. We're going to put it at about that location there, so we're just going to get set into place and then run our screw right in. Then we're just going to make it so it's even, so it will be facing front to rear, and then we'll run it in the other side here.We're now to mount our bracket. This is the quick release bracket in our kit to the small one right here, and we're going to do that using the two screws. These are the more machine screws, they don't have the point on the end. So just slide this guy in between, line up the holes, and then you can just start it right into the bracket there. And I recommend not tightening it all the way down on one side, I usually like to get it started maybe about halfway and then I'll get the other one started. This will just let you be able to move it around freely without worrying about accidentally damaging one of the ears.We can now take our brake controller, and we're just going to insert it into the bracket. I'll show you the backside real quick here before we slide it in, just because it's harder to see, and you can see here that our connector is just going to go in like that. So I'm going to slide it in place, put the back first, and then kind of just push it up until those click into place, and then we can plug in the backside. It can be a little tricky to see, to grab it, but it's usually easier to put on the bracket first and then the connector.And we can see as soon as we plugged it in, that it lit up, and it is now showing that we are connected, because we are, our trailer is currently hooked up. So if we go ahead and hit our manual slide, I can hear the buzzing of the brakes behind me, so I know it's sending me output. You can also see here that it is sending a voltage, if you we're not connected, it would just tell you on the screen that you weren't connected to a trailer. So this is a good way to just test it out, plug your trailer in, see that you can detect your trailer, and try to hit the manual slide, and if you get a voltage here and you hear the buzzing, you know that it's sending it to your brakes.And that completes our installation of Tekonsha's Prodigy P3 Trailer Brake Controller on our 2006 Ram 1500.
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