To see if this custom-fit item will work for you please tell us what vehicle you'll use it with.
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.
Hello, neighbors, it's Brad here at etrailer. And today, we're taking a look at the Tekonsha Prodigy P3 Proportional Brake Controller on a 2019 Honda Passport. Now the P3 is one of the more premium brake controllers out on the market. And it does set itself apart in a bunch of different ways. And part of this is this nice LED screen really is a good visual for a lot of different things including being able to set multiple presets for different trailers. So if you are someone who tows a bunch of different trailers it's really nice to have those presets ready.
That way you're not having to adjust every time you hook up you can simply go to those presets, set it to that trailer and you'll be good just as the last time. Now, this is great too because it also will send you a diagnostic alert if you are having any issues whether it be electrical on your trailer or the controller itself. So that's really nice that it's gonna keep you alert to know what's going on here. Now, something else that's nice with this screen is the ability to kind of customize it however you'd like. So with this, you can adjust the brightness of color to a bunch of different, different settings here.
And that's kind of nice just for matching your interior lights. So that way during the night it's not glowing something that's too bright. You can adjust that down or you can just match the colors and that way it kind of just gives it a better look overall. So, this is really also nice here because it's easy to navigate as you can see, it's well laid out. And some of the other ones are simple, which is great.
But sometimes they're not as intuitive as this. Now this one here, you can also see, you can set your brake type to electric or hydraulic. So that's really nice as well having that ability. Traditional Proportional Brake Controller. This has a lot of the same features.
So you can actually set your power or your gain as you may call it pretty easily. And it's gonna give you a nice easy readout. And you can adjust it by a decimal point. So you can really fine tune this one. And also your boost is gonna be pretty easy. You can see this little truck and trailer picture here which is kind of nice because for those of you, for boosts, sometimes it's hard to kind of get a visual of what you need to be putting it at. So for this instance, we don't have any boost set for a little trailer. Now, if we move up to boost setting level one, you can see it goes to a Tandem Axle, a little bit larger trailer. Boost two. We can see we actually have a goose neck or fifth wheel here. And then finally, three. This is gonna be for those larger Tandem Axle maybe a car hauler or something along those lines. But this is a good visual to kind of look down really quick. See what boost level you're at, just to know that you're set for the right truck and right trailer combo. One thing that really sets this apart is the ability to have our different presets for certain trailers. And you're just holding this down. And you're gonna see you actually have five different trailer settings. So if you are towing the work trailer during the week but on the weekends you want to take your camper or maybe your boat or whatever it may be out. You can actually preset this. That way you can just select it. It's gonna have the settings that you dialed in from the last time driving it. And it's gonna be a lot easier than having to readjust everything. It's pretty, pretty easy. And it's, you know, it's having those settings available sets this apart from other ones because as it's nice to be able to adjust having your settings right then and there to be able to jump into it is great. And it actually has a readout for which trailer it is as well so that way, you know, pretty quickly looking at the screen if you went from trailer one, maybe your work trailer down to trailer three, which could be your boat. You have your T3. Now, installation of this brake controller is gonna be very easy. And part of that is because we used a piggyback wiring harness that's going to attach to a vehicle specific plug to the back of our brake controller. So there's no wiring splicing needed, just plug and play, mount it up and you're ready to go. Now, if you're new to towing you may think that a brake controller is going to give you that quick brake controlling on your trailer. Well, not without a 7-way adapter. You're gonna need this actually on your vehicle. And that's gonna allow that 12 volt signal as well as the brake signal, to be able to go to your trailer and to your brake controller. And that way it has that communication. So before you do get a brake controller and hook it up, make sure you pick up one of these. Now you're gonna want to check and see as some vehicles actually have these from the factory. So if yours does not, you can actually pick these here up at etrailer using our fit guide to make sure you have the proper one. And the install on this is pretty easy and straightforward. So, you'll be ready to hook up to your brake controller and use the brakes on your trailer with your 7-way installed. So, check to make sure that your vehicle either has one or if you need one, we have these here. Now to find our plug to attach our adaptor in order to get our brake controller. You're gonna look for your OBD-II port. It's gonna be under the left side of your steering wheel on the driver's side. And you're gonna reach up there. There's gonna be a small gray clip. Now, it is taped up a little bit, so I've gone ahead and I've actually removed some of that tape and it does help to push down your parking brake just to kind of gain a little bit more access. And I've gone ahead and just cut the tape just to pull it down a bit. You don't have to. You should be able to get to the clip but it's gonna be hiding under. So make sure you get eyes on that and we'll be able to attach our pigtail. So we're gonna go ahead and take our pigtail. We're gonna take the gray piece here. And make that attachment to that plug. Now you should hear an audible click when you get that clipped into place and you might wanna give it a small tug just to make sure that it is locked into place. But once you have that plugged in, you're gonna have your pigtail hanging down. So pretty easy. This is going to go into our brake controller. So this makes it really easy. As far as no splicing involved. It's just plug and play, a lot easier. Now, the hardest part I found is finding a good spot to mount your brake controller. And that's when you take the brake controller, see where it's actually going to fit and where you want it to where it's out of the way yet still accessible. On this vehicle, it seems like the best spot I'm gonna have is right about this area. So I'm gonna go ahead and pull this panel off just to kind of make sure that we actually do have some clearance there. So you're gonna want to grab underneath and kind of pull by the steering wheel here. And you're gonna see this kind of pop. So just work your way through. There's some clips here. This side panel actually pops off as well but once this went off like that You can see it's kind of drop down. So pretty easy. We see there's a nice wide open area here. As long as we stay away from our switches to mount this up. So lots of real estate to work with. So let's see which looks the best. Now at this point, you're gonna wanna sit in your vehicle in the position that you would be in when towing. And that way you can kind of get a feel for where this is gonna sit. And that way you can see if it's easily accessible to manually apply your brakes, but also gain access to all your adjustment buttons. And you're gonna see this one here has a plastic clip. Now this can mount to a bracket and it's pretty nice to have. If you have multiple vehicles, you can simply unclip this and swap it to the next. But we're actually going to be permanently mounting this one up. And we're gonna be doing that with our bracket here. So, kind of set this up. If you're gonna see you do still have quite a bit of angle to adjust. So being even at a large angle as this is not gonna be an issue to get this exactly mounted how we want it. So, this seems to be a pretty good spot. Run through, I can still access all my buttons. So, now we're going to make some marks and self-tap in our bracket. So now that we've settled on our location and we know that it's clear to actually drill down here. We can put this back in place. And you may need to peel this back a little bit but then you're gonna want to put your white tabs in first. And it should just kind of clip into place here. And then you can actually put your side panel on. Now self-tapping screws will go through plastic pretty easy but sometimes at an angle like this they can walk and kind of scratch your plastics. So just to be a little bit safer, I'm gonna go ahead and put just a small pilot hole here so we can start our self-tapper a little bit easier. So with our pilot drilled holes here, we'll go ahead and just take our screws. These are just gonna be a Phillips head and we'll just tighten these in place. Now, this is just plastic we're screwing into so you don't need to get too crazy as this can actually strip it out. So just tighten it down until it's snug. Center it up how you want it. So now you can actually plug in your controller here. We can see it's already lightened up. So that's a great sign. And on this side, we're gonna be using our bolts here. And it's gonna be a Phillips head all the same. So let's just find a nice angle that we like. We could go ahead and start tightening these into place. Now, depending on the angle that you want, you can, I have it in the slotted function here so we can really adjust to where exactly we want it. And then once it's set, we can kind of just tighten that down but you can actually put it in fixed positions. It's kind of up to you in how you want it to sit in your vehicle. So we are lit up, which is a good sign. It's getting that 12 volt power. And I'm gonna go ahead and use my manual override. And it's gonna tell me pretty quick, no trailer connected. So, the next thing we're gonna need to do is hook up to our trailer to make sure that it's actually sending the signal to the brakes. Now we are actually gonna be using a 7-pole tester here but it's gonna simulate the same thing. And we'll be able to see that we are actuating and the brakes are working. Since you guys probably don't have a 7-pole tester at home. You're gonna wanna hook up to your trailer and find a place where you can drive around at low speeds and test out your manual override. It's a good time to actually kind of adjust and play with your gain a little bit too just so it's not super aggressive. You can kind of fine tune it. And then as you drive your vehicle, you're gonna really probably tune it a little bit more to get the vehicle really dialed into the trailer. But for the time sake, find a nice open place, play around with your manual override and see that it's working. So now hooked up to our tester. I'm gonna just slide the manual override here and we shouldn't see brake voltage going up, simulating, sending the signal to our brakes on the trailer. So now that we know we're getting a signal for our brakes, we're ready to hook up to our trailer and get to towing. And that was a look in installation of the Tekonsha Prodigy P3 Proportional Brake Controller on a 2019 Honda passport. Thanks for watching..
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