To see if this custom-fit item will work for you please tell us what vehicle you'll use it with.
This is one of our favorite brake controllers, with flawless braking and a tiny dash knob that looks like it came straight from the factory. It's so easy to adjust your settings or activate manual override.
Features:
Specs:
Note: Pick up a universal mounting panel to give your installation a professional look! 331-TPSI-001 - sold separately
Adjusting the braking settings on the Tow-Pro Liberty is super simple. To get more power output - the maximum amount of power that will be applied to your trailer's brakes - rotate the knob clockwise toward 10. To decrease the power output, rotate it counterclockwise toward 0.
When you apply the tow vehicle's brakes, the knob will change from blue to red to signal that the trailer brakes are being activated. The higher the braking power output, the deeper the red that you will see.
To engage manual override, simply press the control knob. This will activate the trailer's brakes and brake lights independent of your tow vehicle, great for stopping sway or controlling your trailer's momentum in an emergency.
When you are calibrating the brake controller for the first time, the LED lights will signal your progress.
You'll start by braking 20 times or so to let the unit learn its orientation and the direction of travel. You don't need to have a trailer connected for it to calibrate; the only difference is that the knob won't illuminate at all. If your trailer is connected, the LED light will flash green/blue as it calibrates. When the display turns solid blue, initial calibration is complete.
Once done, the unit will remain calibrated. If recalibration is required, it will happen automatically and without LED indication.
The Liberty has almost no mounting restrictions. It comes in 2 pieces: the main unit and the control knob. The main unit mounts out of sight and out of the way. You don't have to worry about dinging your knee on a bulky brake controller or interfering with your vehicle's airbags.
The control knob can be installed in any convenient spot that's easy for you to see and access. This can be a blank switch panel, an open spot on your center console, or wherever there's space on your dashboard. A universal mounting panel is included to ensure a clean, from-the-factory look. Custom-fit panels are available for certain vehicles as well. Before you do any drilling, be sure there's enough clearance behind the dash for the entire knob to install!
Once you've decided where you want to put the control knob, you'll need to find a good place to install the main unit. Your only restriction is the 3' cable connecting the main unit and the control knob. Securely mount the box using screws, double-sided tape, or zip-ties (not included). A mounting kit (RE67FR - sold separately) is also available for the Tow-Pro Liberty. Do not attach the module to wiring or cables that can shift as you drive!
Then plug the custom-fit harness right into your vehicle and the brake controller and you're done!
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 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 Tow-Pro Liberty uses an internal 3-axis accelerometer 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.
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 and installing the REDARC Tow-Pro Brake Controller on a 2016 Jeep Grand Cherokee. Now the REDARC is available in two different configurations and they're both very similar. But if you are towing one to two axles, you're gonna wanna pick up the Tow-Pro Liberty. And if you are towing one to three axles, you're gonna wanna pick up the Tow-Pro Elite.
Now, regardless of which REDARC you pick up, they're both gonna share the same benefit of not being your typical brake controller. And when you think brake controller, normally you think a big, chunky piece that's gonna be down here to where you can hit your knees on it every time you get in the vehicle. And they're generally pretty unsightly. It's not the case with REDARC. They've done a great job of making something that's equally as usable, but also a lot more OEM, lot cleaner, and way less of a footprint.
And you can see this is all controlled just by the turn on the knob. You still have your manual override by pressing and you still can adjust your gain. Now you don't have your fancy screen like you would on a normal break controller, but you still get all the uses of one in a very nice package and it keeps your interior looking really good. Now you're easily able to adjust your gain. You can see the numbers here on the knob and you can adjust accordingly.
That way, you can determine based on the weight of your trailer how much you need this to proportionally brake. Now, if you wanna manual override, no problem. You'll just simply push the button and you still have that manual override function. You can also go into a user controlled and that way you can apply it to wherever you want. That way, it's not proportionally braking to whatever your vehicle's doing just by the quick or double tap of the button.
Now we installed the Liberty today and with the factory tow package, that's the great part about this as well. There's no wire splicing. You can simply pick up the harness that goes along with your vehicle using our fit guide. And that way, it is truly plug and play. You can have this installed extremely easily and they're both gonna install exactly the same, except for you are gonna be drilling a little extra hole for the LED light as they are a little bit different between the two. But other than that, everything's gonna be exactly the same. Now this is definitely something that you can do in your driveway or garage, especially with it being plug and play. You'll be able to knock this out within under 30 minutes, pretty easily. So you are gonna be pulling some panels off and that's gonna be the trickiest part, just making sure that you have clearance and zip tying up some wires. And other than that, it's super easy. So I'm gonna walk you through it. That way, you can get yours installed. Now the REDARC is a pretty easy installation. And one of the first things that we need to do is determine where our plug is. So if you have that factory tow package, we'll be looking for a plug that this will go into and this will go into our module. We can figure out where to mount that later, but we also need to determine where we wanna put our brake controller. So the REDARC's footprint is gonna look similar to just this knob. It's just gonna be mounted somewhere around this area. And there are a few options, but honestly, it seems like the best for this is gonna be right about here. That's gonna give us clearance behind there and it's still gonna be easily accessible and you'll be able to see it illuminated with that number up top to know exactly where your gain is set. So we're gonna start by pulling some of the panels out so we can gain access, not only to our plug, but also to be able to mount up our controller. So we're gonna be taking off a few panels. And throughout all of this, using a plastic trim panel tool is really nice because it's not gonna mar up the plastic and leave any marks long term. So we are gonna pry apart this side here. That's gonna allow us not only to see a little bit better, but also just to kind of gain access to the rest of the panels to come off. So we have some clips along here. It does kind of just pop out, just be careful. Your clips can break, they are just plastic. So make sure that those white retainer clips stay on there. And you're gonna wanna just kind of peel this back as it kind of loops into this, a pillar plastic. So I'm gonna pull down just a little bit. You can see that kind of clear out and it kind of tucks in between this weather stripping as well. So just kind of move this down and you can set this aside for now. Now we are gonna be pulling this section of our dash down and that's gonna give us access not only to drill and make sure we have clearance, but also to mount everything up. And we need to gain access to some seven millimeter screws that are along the bottom, but we need to also get this side panel off. And part of that's gonna be taking off this little scuff panel. So this, again, is just clips, but you wanna be careful. This aluminum piece here, if you bend it, it will leave a crease. So just kind of keep it nice and flat here and work your way down. Try not to pull this up or anything like that. You want your installation to leave your car looking just the same as before you installed it. So with that popped out, we can go ahead and get this panel out. Same kind of thing as this one up here. It's in the weather stripping a little bit and there's some plugs that go in the side. So you're gonna kind of have to work at an angle. But if you reach back here, you should be able to pop that out. And then, if your brake's in the way, you can go ahead, push this back. But you should be able to kind of work this out. There's gonna be some hooks here that go into the weather stripping. So once we kind of move this portion, so we'll just get those clips. And this is pretty malleable here to be able to kind of bend it, but I'm gonna push this back and you'll see that these are gonna unlatch, kind of from this weather stripping. So same up here. And then once we get this at an angle, we can kind of pop this out again. If you need to use your ebrake to push that down, it'll give you a little more clearance and we have this popped off. So this is the plastic clip that's there. And then these just kind of slot in. So just that once you pop those out, we'll unhook these and this will be outta the way. Now underneath our dash, there's gonna be this fabric panel and we're gonna wanna take this out. It's gonna give us a little bit more clearance and there's gonna be two plastic pushpins. So either using a trim panel tool or even a flat head just kind of pry these out and this should drop out. Now, there is a light that you can see that's gonna be attached. So we'll be unplugging that as well. And this just kind of is tucked a little bit in the plastic here. So just kind of pull that down. And then this is gonna be just that little ambient light that's underneath there. So I'm gonna go ahead and unplug this, so we can get this completely out of the way. So we're gonna need to gain access to some seven millimeters that are up here that it's holding this top portion of our dash up. And the way to do that is right here, where we have our steering column, there's this plastic bezel that goes around our steering wheel column. So we'll just go ahead. You can see there's two little bumps here. You can kind of just grab along here and then a little bit of pressure along there allows us to pull this back. And that's gonna give us access to seven millimeter screws. There's one here and then there's gonna be one on the other side that's identical. So with an extension and a seven millimeter socket, I'm gonna go ahead and get those removed. Just make sure that you're holding on to all your hardware. Now, also under here, we're gonna have some seven millimeters. We're gonna go ahead and remove those. So there's gonna be one here and then just follow along and you're gonna see that there's one right here, one right here. And I think that should just about do it. So we'll go ahead and get those removed. Now those screws underneath popped out, that's gonna allow us to safely get this portion pulled out so that there are gonna be some clips here. So just kind of work your way down and we don't need to fully pull this off. And in fact, it's attached to the airbag down there. So we really don't want to mess around with that too much. Not that it's gonna go off, but the way that it's hooked on, it's not really necessary for us to remove this panel. This is gonna give us, again, enough space to get it mounted up and plugged in. So you can see there is an opening here and that's kind of where we're gonna have our brake controller live. If you wanna have it sit a little bit higher, you could potentially trim this out. It's just plastic and there's nothing behind it. So if you wanted to, you could notch this if you do want a higher mounting point. But just to save time and make it a little bit easier, you can go ahead and put it down here. So the next thing we need to do, now that we have our clearing for our brake controller, is figure out where our plug is to tie in our harness. So now you're gonna wanna look for it, the main harness. You're gonna see a bunch of exposed wires and above that is gonna be our plug. And you'll see it's got four flat pins and that's gonna match up to our harness. So we'll just go ahead and get that snapped in place. And then, we can start routing the rest of our wires. I'm just gonna take our plug here and get this snapped into place. It's kind of a tight spot here, but right there, we got a nice little clean snap sound. So now, if you follow this braided wire, you're gonna see our four plugs here. And that's just gonna go into our REDARC module. So we'll go ahead and grab that. And we're gonna find a nice spot to mount that. So I've gone ahead and just routed this portion of the plug up. So we have the ability to plug this in. And you'll see, opening this panel up is gonna make it a lot easier to figure out a spot to mount this. So I'll go ahead and plug this in. And before we mount this up, we also have to kind of determine this plug. Now, this is kind of interesting. It's neat design here. You can see this one has a 90 and this is kind of just a straight wire and you can use either one. And the reason they do that is sometimes, you run into clearance issues. The brake controller's relatively short, but sometimes, just clearance behind it can make a difference. And having a plug that's straight versus curved can also make a difference as far as that space. So what we need to do is get our brake controller mounted up. And that way, we can determine which side of the plug we're gonna use. And then we'll be able to route this all together, clean it up with some zip ties, and that should be about it. Now our brake controller is about how large it is. So again, it is relatively long and that plug's gonna kind of extend it out. So I'm gonna kind of just test fit it here and mock it up to make sure that we do have that clearance we're looking for. And then once we kind of determine where we want it, this is gonna be the locking collar. We're gonna need to drill it out, a hole here that will allow this to pass through and that's gonna lock it in place. Now it's gonna be a 3/8 drill bit and that should be perfect. As you can see, to kind of align that collar in there. Now, there's also gonna be a small eighth of an inch hole that we're gonna be drilling and that's for this little LED here, so we can illuminate. So first, I'll make our large hole and then we can kind of line up and make our smaller hole for our light to pop through. So just kind of hold it in place where I think it would look good here. I'm gonna just kind of slightly close this. And I am seeing that there are gonna be some clearance issues. So either it's gonna go really low or we're gonna need to go over to the side. This plastic starts to taper off here and it's nice and open. So this is gonna be a safe spot for us to be able to mount up. So just kinda mocking it up. I think putting it right to where the brake controller sits in this location is gonna be great. You can see it's open there. So I'll go ahead and kind of just put my finger here and see where this is gonna close up and I'll just go a little bit lower. So it's gonna sit right about here. So I'm gonna go ahead and make my drill. Now if you need to, you can use a little small pilot hole or just go slow here. It's plastic, so no need to rip through this and have it walk all over your plastic, but just make sure it's nice and poured out. And you can actually go ahead and take that locking collar and just test to make sure that it fits. And it's a little tight. You can see I'm putting pressure on it. It holds it in place, but I'll go back with my drill bit and just kind of work it around just a little bit. You still want it to be nice and tight, not sloppy, but again, once we tighten it down, it is gonna hold it in place. So if you go a little bit bigger, not the end of the world there. And that's gonna be a lot better. So what I'll do is I'll take our brake controller and you can see where our light is. So what I can do is use this and kind of determine where that light's gonna be. And then I'm gonna take my eighth of an inch drill bit and just go ahead and make the hole. Now you're gonna want this centered up because that light's gonna illuminate where our gain is gonna be. So having this in the 12 o'clock position is gonna be the best bet. So I'll go ahead, I'm gonna push my collar back out . And then that way, I can take our brake controller here and just test to make sure everything lines up properly. And everything's looking really good. So next, we're going to go ahead, take the brake controller, and then feed it through to where we get those holes all lined up. I see a little bit of flashing here and that could hinder it from getting tight and sitting nice and flush here. Plus, this just like square here, just for the rigidity that they molded in, could kind of get it in the way to where it's not gonna be as flush as we want. So I might just take a utility knife, kind of cut that out so it has a nice flat mounting spot. Now you're gonna see that there's this little collar here and this is gonna become a indicator of exactly where our switch is gonna be indicated. So we need to make sure there's a little portion here that can sit recess. So if you need to enlarge that hole a little bit to kind of get this to press into place so it sits flush, by all means, you can go ahead and do that. Mine's pretty close here. And I think once we tighten down that collar, it's gonna cinch this up nice and clean. You can see it almost holds itself in place. So what I'll do is take our brake controller here. Now that it's nice and cleaned up back there, I just cut back some of that flashing and plastic. So it does sit nice and flush. And we'll just put the knob through and our light sits there as well. And we'll go ahead, put this collar here, and then we're gonna follow this up with that little locking collar here. So have that handy. So as you're kind of holding the brake controller in place, we'll put our little collar there. I'm trying to get holding them all in place, but once we get this threaded on, that's gonna allow it to kind of hold in place. So let me get this handy. So I've just kind of got it started here. And what I'm gonna do is make sure that I hold my brake controller, push it as far forward as possible so we can get some threads really going. And then I have a 12 millimeter socket. I'm just gonna hand tighten this in place, just making sure that we keep this collar aligned as it gets tighter. That way, we have it perfectly in that hole that we drilled and we don't really need to get too crazy as far as tightening this down. In fact, me just using a socket by hand will probably be enough to really hold this in place and be snug. So go ahead and get it tightened down. And once you have that color tightened down and it's mounted up nice and secure, what you're gonna wanna do is obviously test to make sure that there's clearance by kind of just leaving the dash back in place. So just kind of make sure those clips kind of go in and that it can snap in without any interference. So we're looking like we're good here. So what I'm gonna do is get our cable and it does look like the way that our brake controllers orientated. We're gonna be able to use either side of the cable, doesn't really matter too much. So I'll go ahead and plug one side into the back. I'm gonna use the 90, just might as well. And it just snaps in. It's the ethernet style cable here. So now with this in place, we have this portion of the cable and this is just gonna go into the other end of the module. But we're gonna wanna make sure that we have this nice and tidy. So making sure that we connect this, once we kind of have a good plan of where we wanna mount this. And that way, all the extra cable's not just dangling back there. This also needs to be solidly mounted. Now you can use zip ties to go around here, but you're gonna want it on a portion to where it's not gonna rotate. The way this works is kind of with motion. It'll actually determine whether or not the brakes are going on. So it's important to have this solid on the vehicle. So I'm gonna find a nice spot here, get my wires tucked up, and then we can make our connection, and I'll show you how I did it. So now I have it all zipped up and plugged in and there's a support beam that kind of runs up and curves over. And that's just a support on the dash. So I used that, it's a solid place, ran two zip ties, and cleaned up my wiring. So now we need to make sure that it's all working. And the best way to make sure that it's working is to dial this all the way counterclockwise. That way, it's zeroed out and then take your knob here. Take the zero and line that up with our indicator here at that 12 o'clock position. And as we push it in, we're gonna see that light up blue. So that definitely means that we have power. So all we need to do is get everything popped back in place and all of our panels in. And then we can go ahead and get to using our brake controller. So now I have everything back in and we can see it's lighting up, looks really good. And all that's really left to do is take this out and it's going to learn its position. So since we mounted that module up here, it needs to find itself. And that's gonna be based on that motion as we brake. It's gonna start sensing that. So that's why it's important to mount it up solid. So this will calibrate itself just with normal driving. So just pick it out, hit the brakes maybe a few times just throughout normal driving. And by the time you're ready to hook up to your trailer and use it, it'll be ready to go. And that was a look and installation of the REDARC Tow-Pro Proportional Brake Controller on the 2016 Jeep Grand Cherokee..
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