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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.
Today in our 2017 Honda Ridgeline, we'll be installing the Tekonsha Prodigy P3 Trailer Brake Controller. Part number 90195. To ease our installation we'll be using the Tekonsha Plug-In Wiring Adapter for Electric Brake Controllers, part number 3070-P. Now the reason you want a brake controller is if you have a trailer that has electric trailer brakes and your vehicle doesn't have a brake controller, you won't be able to use those trailer brakes. When you have a brake controller installed you'll be able to take advantage of those trailer brakes and be able to slow down your trailer a lot more efficiently and putting less strain on your vehicle's brakes. Also, in some areas of the country, they do require functioning trailer brakes on trailers over a certain load, so that's just something to keep in mind. All right here's what our brake controller looks like installed.
As you can see it's a nice compact unit that doesn't take up much space in our vehicle at all. It's a nice convenient spot, easy to read the display while we're driving down the road and easy to reach all of our controls on it, including the manual override here on the bottom. Here's what it looks like once we've connected to our trailer. As you can see, we have a nice little indication on our screen which displays a pickup truck and a little trailer behind it, showing that we're connected. We also have our current level of amperage going to our trailer brakes.
Now when we apply our manual override here, you can see how much voltage is going to our trailer brakes. Okay now over to the left of our brake controller here we have our two adjustment buttons here to adjust how much power is being applied to our brakes. We can go all the way up to 14 or all the way down to zero which would be no assist at all. Now over to our right of the brake controller we have our boost level button right here. This will give us more power output going to our trailer brakes and also allow us to make quick adjustments in case there's change in driving circumstances where we need more braking power. We just press this button once to go up.
We have three different levels of boost settings on this brake controller. The higher you go the more assist you get. Now also you can see the size of the trailer behind the pickup truck. It's bigger. Now to the bottom right we have our settings button here. This gives you a whole bunch of options you can change.
If we hit our okay button down here for the display we can change brightness, color, you also can change your contrast, so you've got three settings here for your display. Brake type, you have electric and then you have hydraulic over electric which is when you have like electric discs, you have an electric pump on the trailer to control hydraulic disc brakes. You'll find that on some of your larger trailers or heavy-duty trailers, but most trailers just use standard electric brakes, so we'll make sure we're set on that setting. Then we have our help area. You can change your language on it, trouble shooting guide, you've got contact information, their website, phone number. Now what I really like about the Tekonsha Brake Controller that we have here is that there's a lot of adjustments, a lot of customizations that you can make with it, and by having all those customizations you can make it suit your needs. You can match your display color to match your interior lighting. You can fine tune stuff and it has the built in diagnostic functions to help you diagnose any problems that you may have. Now that we've gone over some features of our Tekonsha Prodigy P3, we'll show you how to get it installed. Okay the first thing I'm going to do is find a place to mount our brake controller for installation. Typically you want to have it to the bottom right of your steering wheel, in this area. However our customer today requested something a little bit different. We go over in front of our gear shifter here, we have this pocket, we can mount it here. However, this panel here is not easily removable and there's an air conditioning control unit behind this panel. We need to make a hole for the wires to pass through, because the air conditioning control unit is in that location, I don't feel comfortable to use a drill in this area so we'll use a utility knife instead to score out an area for the wires to pass through. Okay once you have it marked out, we'll just keep going along those lines until we're all the way through. Okay, with that cut out we'll make sure our wire can actually pass through there. All right, this is the end that connects to our brake controller. This is the end that plugs into our wiring harness already in the vehicle, so what we're going to do is we're going to stick this in through the hole we just made, go up with it, and push it on up. Then we'll reach behind our center console and pull it on out. All right, we've got our wire harness out now. Now we'll plug this into the other end of the vehicle. On the lower left side of our dash, right above our diagnostic port right here, you'll find our other connector that we've got to plug into. Got it right here at the tip of my finger. We'll plug our brake controller into that port. Okay now we'll take our brake controller and our plug and connect the two. As you can see, our brake controller powered up so we know we have a good connection. Take a paint marker here and mark where our bracket needs to go. We'll just mark the corners of it where it sits. Okay we unplugged our brake controller and got it out of the way for the time being, just so we can get our screws to start to hold our bracket in place. Okay we got one of the screws to start now. We'll tighten it down a little bit so it doesn't fall out. Make sure our bracket's lined up where we need it and we'll get our other screw in. All right with our bracket securely mounted, we'll plug our brake controller back in. Okay now we'll slide our brake controller into place and secure it to the bracket with the provided screws. Okay we'll repeat the process on the other side screwing it in and once we have it started, we'll just snug them down. Having one of these right-angle ratcheting screwdrivers makes this job a lot easier. Now as a quick tech tip here, you may need to zip tie your wiring harness up underneath the dash where it plugs in to avoid your pedals and any other moving parts underneath the dash. However because where we mounted our brake controller, our cable was just long enough and is stretched enough that we don't need to worry about that. That completes our installation of the Tekonsha Prodigy P3 Trailer Brake Controller, part number 90195 with our Tekonsha Plug-In Wiring Adapter for Electric Brake Controllers, part number 3070-P on our 2017 Honda Ridgeline.
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