Arrives before Christmas 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. Its unique off-roading mode helps you handle rough conditions, so get out there and get towing.
Features:
Specs:
The off-road mode is a unique feature of the Redarc Tow-Pro Elite. In this mode, the brake controller will apply your trailer's brakes with a preset amount of power, independent of what your tow vehicle is doing. This is ideal for off-roading or challenging conditions. Set the power low if you're towing through sand or mud so that the trailer doesn't stop with too much force and act as an anchor. If navigating a steep descent, set the power to a higher level to ensure that the trailer doesn't push against the tow vehicle.
To activate the off-road mode, rotate the knob counterclockwise and apply your vehicle's brakes. Push down on the knob twice (2 times within 1 second) and release the brakes. The knob will turn green to let you know that the mode has been activated.
Use the knob to set the braking output -- the maximum amount of power that will be applied to your trailer's brakes. To get more power output, 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 Tow-Pro Elite has almost no mounting restrictions. It comes in 2 pieces: the main unit and the control knob. The main unit can be mounted 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 Elite. 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!
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-control installation kit (ETBC7 - sold separately). A 30-amp circuit breaker kit (331-CBK30-EB - sold separately) may also be required for installation.
For assistance in properly wiring the Tow-Pro Elite, please refer to the diagrams below:
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 Elite 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.
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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 Elite brake controller on a 2020 Sprinter 2500. So here, we have it installed and it looks great. It's functioning wonderfully. And it's right here where I need it to be, right by the steering wheel so it's easy for me to get to this control when I need to manually apply the brakes.
And that's done just at the push of a button here and you can actually see it's illuminating, which is nice because it lets you know that it's actually getting that signal. And adjusting your gain is also gonna be easy here. With this nice back lit feature, you're gonna see it easy to actually get the number according to your gain. Now, if you've had previous brake controllers, a lot of them can be pretty large and clunky, and you're having to mount them here, which can kind of get in the way of your feet. Or you're mounting them down here to where it's not really ideal for applying the brakes when you need to.
Having it right here at my controls is nice because I can access it as soon as I need to. And that's kind of the beauty of the REDARC system. The box is hidden behind here. You can't see it. And all the controls are done here.
And while other brake controllers may have a readout with a screen, and some people like to have those features and be able to check on this, this is simple, easy, and it works without taking a bunch of real estate from your interior of the vehicle. As you can see, I'm moving. And it's really nice because it senses inertia and it's going to light this accordingly. So a small little brake is that light pink, but if I really need to jab on the brakes and it needs to throw those brakes on the trailer on, you're gonna get a nice red readout, letting you know that it's applying hard. Now, as far as install goes on the Sprinter van, this is really easy to do.
You can make it look nice and clean. Everything tucks up well. And there can be an option by getting two piggyback adapters. It's gonna make this plug and play, zero splicing required, and this can be done probably in under an hour. It's really easy and you'll be able to have a trailer brakes within a small period of time. And it's gonna look good in the process doing it. So the REDARC system is a great option for a brake controller that takes up a minimal amount of space as far as mounting it up. Some of your other ones are a little bit chunky and they can get in the way of your knees, and also can be troublesome to get a nice, clean mounting position on them. Well, this is really nice 'cause it's accomplished with this smaller little knob here. And this is gonna plug into our knob and then into our module. Now, off the module, you have this plug which comes with it. and you're gonna see that just plugs in and this is going to run to the wiring to make the connection. And that's fine. This should work okay, but to make it truly plug and play and just a lot easier without having to do any splices, that can be accomplished by getting this piggy tail. And that's going to jump to this style connector, which then will go to this connector. And that'll plug in here. And this is gonna go into the OEM tow package plug, making it nice and easy and not having to splice any wires. To begin routing it, we're gonna start with our Tekonsha wire here and we just need to find the factory plug that this is gonna go into. And so on some of the Sprinters here, you're gonna find that underneath the seat, tucked underneath this panel, you're gonna find a green plug. You may have to dig around a little bit for it, but to make it easy, it is color matched to the plug that we'll be putting it in. Now, there is only one way that it can go. You have a little locking mechanism up here and that's gonna go where this slot is. So go ahead and get that plugged in. Now, finding a path to route this up to our dash where we're gonna mount our brake controller, there's not a whole lot of great options here, so I just kind of routed it up and underneath the seat rail. And I've checked to make sure that the seat can actually move forward and back without any binding. So I'll make sure to zip tie that in place so it doesn't catch. And then the rest of the wire, I'm gonna actually run underneath the floor mat. And that way, we can route it up to our dashboard without any exposed wires. So I've gone ahead and I've attached it. Our customer here has a bracket for their center console, so I'm actually using that to kind of route it down. But just find a nice way to tuck this. And then you're gonna see underneath this center floor mat here, I'm gonna just tuck the wire in there. And then also, just following it and just kind of go under here. And that's gonna gain us access to route it under the dash. And then we're gonna go ahead and get some panels off and make the rest of our connections. So we have our wire around here, and just kind of planning ahead, we're gonna need to mount our module underneath here. And then you're still gonna have the plug that goes to the actual controller that gives you quite a bit of space to move around. So finding a nice spot to zip tie this up or make sure that it's not gonna be able to move is kind of crucial. And I think part of the easiest way to do this is we're gonna pull this panel off as we're gonna need to pop these out 'cause this is where our controller's gonna live. So let's go ahead and we'll get this panel off. And underneath, you're gonna see there's four T20 Torx bits underneath here that we'll go ahead and remove. Now, with those out, you're gonna want to simply kind of pry back here, try to get this plastic to pop. Just take your time. You might need to get this outer one here popped first. Let's do that. That one's pretty easy. A-ha! So as soon as I pull that panel off, I see that there's two more, so we'll go ahead and get those removed. Now, let's try again. Now, I know there's obviously gonna be some electrical connections here, so when pulling this out, just make sure you're not yanking too far out and damaging the wires. And when you get to this corner here where the cup holder is, this little tab wants to hang on there so giving this a slight tug back just to kind of gain a little bit of a clearance for that and pulling back on the clips should allow this to drop out. To make it a little bit easier and gain you a little bit more room, we can go ahead and unplug our light controls here. So I'm gonna push on this tab. It's kinda tricky to get to here, but push that. Push that tab down and then this little sliding lock will move out of the way. And then that should be able to come out here. And actually pushing that lock allows that clip to push out a little bit more here. And just like that, we have it undone. So now, I'm gonna take our other piggyback here that's gonna go to our actual module. And let's get this connected. We can now route the rest of this wire, just tucking it under here. And this still gives me a decent amount of room to work with for mounting up our module. Now, it seems like we have a gap here on the panel. I want to make sure that there's nothing behind here, but what we can actually do is get this, just take some self-tappers and mount this in place. And that's gonna be great for running our wire up to where our controls are gonna go. So let's go ahead and I think I'm gonna go grab some self-tappers, make sure there's nothing behind here, which it looks like we are good. We'll get this mounted up. Now, as far as routing this wire, obviously, it's next to the brake or the gas pedal, which I don't want someone's foot to get caught up in that. So what I've done is I'm gonna try to route this to a nice clean spot to where it's gonna be out of the way. And there is a little gap here on this plastic. I just kind of moved this heat right there, the HVAC, just to kind of gain some access, pull a little bit more slack. We'll tuck this and then this is gonna be nice for being able to put our piggyback there and attaching to our module. So now, you're gonna want to take your other pig tail and it's gonna be pretty easy here. We're just gonna clip those together. And this one is going to slide in and this locking tab is gonna be on the backside. And the rest of these wires here. I'll just tuck this excess the back up. And honestly, we're gonna have our plastic going down here so this should all be hidden. So now, go ahead and get your connector. This actually plugs into the module and then into the switch, so we'll just get this connected. Now, there was some twist ties that came with this. I would suggest holding onto one as we're probably gonna be bundling up quite a bit of this wire as our switch is gonna be located right about here. But for now, since I have my location, I'm gonna go ahead and grab my plastic panel and make space for our switch to mount up. So when mounting up your REDARC, you can kind of put it wherever fits your needs. Our customer here wants to actually mount it in this area 'cause you have these knockout panels here. And that way, you're not drilling into a whole plastic panel here. This is easy to replace if you ever want to take it out or replace it with something different. And it does come out with this little knockout panel and that's gonna live in here. I'm gonna go ahead and I'm gonna pop these out and figure out how we're gonna mount that up, and get it nice and clean looking. So to get these popped out, you have two tabs here. I'm just gonna pinch those, give a forward motion, and they should come out pretty easy. So if you are mounting to a different spot than these punch-out panels, you can go ahead and use this. I think though, I can omit that and really this outside edge here. It looks as if the switch is gonna fit in there pretty well. I'm gonna be doing a little bit of drilling and cutting just to kind of fabricate this in perfect, but it's gonna be a really, really good clean looking install once it's all done. So let me get this mounted in and I'll show you how I did it. So here our actual knob is. It's going to fit in this pretty well with minor modification. So the way I'm gonna do that, I'm just grabbing some snips here. I'm just gonna clip off these tabs all the way down to where we get a flat surface on the bottom. I can actually get these kind of clipped out here. So now, we're gonna need to get the rest of that webbing out. You can go ahead and use your snip to kind of get it in there a little more. And you're gonna want that close to flush because the way that this is gonna sit, it's actually gonna rest pretty well in the center there. And once we get that cleared out, you might want to take a file, get some of those edges out, and then we'll be putting a hole to actually get this amount through. So I'm gonna go through and I'm gonna cut this clean and get that filed out. Now, I've clipped quite a bit, as much as I can get my clippers in there. I think the rest of it, it's gonna be pretty easy to just kind of hold it in form. That way, it doesn't pull the plastic too much, but grab a pair of needle nose, and you can bite onto that plastic tab, and then just kind of twist off the rest of that. Really, we're just trying to make sure we have enough cleared out space for this to slide in. So you want to just kind of test fit it just to see if you can get that button to press. And then you'll know that you at least have enough cleared out for that. So again, needle nose. They're gonna be big help here and just kind of work at it. If you have a small file, that's also gonna be a really good way to do that as well. So I've gone ahead and cleared this plastic out. And that's really gonna make it nice and easy for our little controller here to slide in, but we're gonna have to make a little hole in order for this to go through. Now, I'm gonna start with a smaller bit just so it's a little bit easier for it to drill through without cracking the plastic. And then we're gonna need to space it out large enough. This collar actually goes in to tighten this into place. And so we're gonna want to make sure that we, we'll make that hole a little bit bigger, but not too large. And that way, it has a nice secure fit. So first, let's get our pilot hole in. I'm gonna pick right at the center here. And we have our hole mounted there. So I'm gonna just kind of test fit this through, just gonna see if it's lining upright. And it looks like that's gonna be a great spot for it, so I'm going to go ahead. I'm gonna largen this hole. And so I've found a drill bit here and it looks to be about the same diameter as this hole. And that's gonna allow this collar to slide through. So really, if you want to, you can make sure that your drill bit's the same size of that collar, and that should be a good fit. Now, we're gonna enlarge the hole here. You might want to put this on a vice if you have one available. And that way, it's gonna not spin around on you. I'll go ahead and get these burrs out real quick and give it a nice little test fit. So now, I'm going to put our switch through and we're gonna test fit to make sure that the collar actually fits on there. And that seems like it's going to be a perfect fit. So now, I haven't tightened this down. I want to actually, we have our sticker that comes with the kit and the sticker is really just kind of goes around. And when this illuminates, it makes it a little easier to see, but you see this little tab, that's gonna be your indicator of where it's actually going to be at on it setting. So this one, the sticker is a little bit wide for this knockout plug. So I'm actually going to trim this up, but I want to figure out where our dead center is, or at least where we want our indicator. And the best way to do that, just turn it counterclockwise all the way and that's gonna be zero. And then this little controller knob here can kind of go however you want. If you want the REDARC to face one way, that's fine. But I think since it's gonna be mounted up, it's going to be easy for the driver to see that the indicator zero here is going to be great. And then that way, when you adjust, you'll be able to see those numbers nice and easily. So I'll go ahead and I'll take our collar off. So here, we have it installed and it looks great. It's gonna be easily accessible for the driver to not only see, but to operate. And it's nice being able to use these little punch-out panels because you're not really having to drill in to the main plastic of the vehicle. So now, we have this installed. All we gotta do is make our connection from our REDARC module. So we'll go ahead and plug that in. And then this other end is simply going to go to the back of our brake controller. And pushing the button, we see the light come on. So all that's really left to do is get our panel put back in place, and we need to go out and get this calibrated, and then we'll be ready to tow. And what we're doing here is going to be getting up to 20 miles per hour, and then braking, and then repeating that process until you'll see this light will actually turn blue and it's gonna stay solid. Now, you're gonna need to hook up to your trailer. Or if you have a seven pole tester with a box that gives the output, that's gonna be ideal, but it does need to see a load on here in order for it to be calibrated. So if you're installing this and don't have your trailer available, I definitely suggest when you get to your trailer, the first thing you're gonna want to do is calibrate to make sure this is working. So let's take this out. We'll get some braking going on. Now, the reason we're doing this is because the module box is gonna try to find its location. It can be mounted really in any orientation, but doing the calibration test kind of gives it an idea of where it's actually gonna live in the vehicle and how that motion's gonna be working during the braking. So getting a little more speed, one of the brakes again. So there, we had after about six or seven times of braking, we have our solid blue light. So we are officially calibrated. So once you hook up to your trailer, all you need to do is adjust your setting of brakes, and you'll be good to go, and ready to have your brakes applied on your trailer at the push of a button. And that was the look and installation of the REDARC Tow-Pro Elite brake controller on a 2020 Mercedes-Benz Sprinter 2500. Thanks for watching..
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