Video Transcript for Redarc Tow-Pro Liberty Brake Controller Installation - 2018 Ford F-150

Hey everybody, Ryan here at etrailer. Today on our 2018 Ford F-150 we're gonna be showing you how to install the REDARC Tow-Pro Liberty Electric Brake Controller and we're gonna be doing that in conjunction with the REDARC Adaptor Plug. But before we get into that, let's take a couple minutes check this out and make sure it's gonna work for you. If you plan on pulling a trailer around that has brakes on it, whether they're electric or electric over hydraulic you're gonna need a way to apply those brakes. That way you know, slow you down in a much shorter time and keep you safe and everything like that. And that's where a trailer brake controller is gonna come into play.

When it comes to these late model trucks, you know, there's not a ton of room to put extra stuff on the dash usually. And that's where I really like the REDARC style. It's a very small knob and to me is about as factory as you can get. So this is all you're gonna see in terms of what's gonna be mounted on the dash. So very inconspicuous but still easy to get to, easy to operate and everything like that.

So this particular controller is gonna work for those trailers that have one and two axles. So probably pretty common for what the F-150 is gonna be pulling around and you know, to me I like this style better than the traditional more boxy style brake controllers which you could put on this dash for sure. But it just takes up space, you know If that's what you're familiar with and that's what you like there's a bunch of options out there. I like the Tekonsha Prodigy P3 is a really good choice but with this one it's going to be a proportional style brake controller and that's usually what I recommend. So more or less what that means is however hard you hit the brakes in your truck, the trailer brakes are gonna match up pressure.

So you know, if you're rolling up to a stop sign and you're halfway down, trailer brakes are gonna do the same thing. On the other end of things if you're on the highway, maybe an accident up ahead or something and you really gotta stand on that brake pedal, the trailer's gonna do the same thing. So it just makes your braking experience a little more predictable and a little more smooth. You're going to be able to adjust your braking force with the knob. All right So when you turn this you're gonna have zero and it runs all the way up to 10 and more or less what that braking force is gonna do is you can kind of fine tune it to suit where you're driving, how heavy a load you got, things like that.

So you know, let's say you got an enclosed trailer and you're going to pick up equipment and you don't have anything in the trailer you probably don't need much help, right So you can probably turn this down to 1 or a 2. But let's say you load it up super heavy and you can kind of feel the trailer wanting to push you around a little bit or something like that. You can always dial that up to a higher number until you find that speed spot. So definitely lets you kind of suit things up to your particular needs. This is also going to have a manual override. You simply just push down on the knob and what happens when you do that is it's going to send power or it's going to engage just a trailer brake. So a lot of times you'd use that in event of a sway situation or if you have a sliding type 5th wheel and you need to slide the 5th wheel or something along those lines, what you can do especially in the event of a sway is push down on it and kind of ramp it up, feather it up that'll slow the trailer down and help kind of get it back under control, get it riding straight behind your truck again. So when it comes down to it, you know, I think it's a pretty good fit for the F-150. Everything went together pretty smooth. I like the location that we have it where you can see it, get to it easily and everything else. And we have a lot of luck with REDARC brake controllers. I do a lot of 'em and they seem to be reliable. You rarely run into any issues so really can't go wrong. As far as the installation goes, you know, it seems like done quite a bit of these Fords and they're all kind of a little bit different from the next. But I've ran into two main scenarios with these. With ours we have a factory 7-way connector on our back bumper and all we used was the adapter plug and the brake controller. And so with that adapter plug it just plugs into some factory wiring under the dash here into the brake controller. You mount this up and that's about it. If your truck does not have the factory 7-way what you can do is get these two parts that we just talked about as well as the 7-way vehicle wiring harness. And even if that's your scenario, still pretty easy. That 7-way kind of just tees into some existing wiring, plugs in. So you'll just have to have that setup up back there. And then all this should be applicable to your situation as well. But if you'd like to hang around, feel free to, we'll go ahead and get started on it now. To begin our installation, we're gonna be here in the front seat of our truck and we need to locate our factory connector plug, which is usually located right here in this area just behind the dash. So you can lower this panel down to make it easier to get to. And with these, they literally just unsnap so you can kind of work your way around here till it drops down. To give us even more space, we'll remove this metal plate here. So there's a total of four 10 millimeter head bolts. You just got one in each corner. So go ahead and pull them out. (dill grinding) That connector plug is gonna be located just inside of this opening here and it's a little tricky to see but your coin pocket or this little container on the front of your dash, that connector plugs actually kind of plugged into the back of that. It goes to nothing, it's kind of just a keeper. So you know, I'll get that disconnected and show you what it looks like and how you would separate it. So I unplugged it and that's what we're looking for. Alright, that's the factory connector. And so like I said, this is plugged into kind of a just a keeper, you know, to prevent it from bouncing around. To get it disconnected you got a tab there in the center, you push that down and hold it and then this will pull right out. Take our adapter plug, so one end, you know, will match up with the factory connector, which is that in there and that's literally just gonna plug right in. And now we can find a spot to actually kinda mount up our brake controller. And you just want to have it be on something solid that's not gonna bounce around or anything like that. You know, you don't wanna zip tie this up to a wire loom or something that moves and call it a day. So what I came up with under the dash here there's kind of a metal support with a couple holes in it already and ironically enough the holes in the brake controller kinda line up with those and I'm gonna mount it this way where this ethernet looking plug will be facing towards the back of the truck and I think that would be sufficient 'cause how it's gonna set it's gonna be pretty well supported. You know, like I said I don't see an issue with it there but just to give it a little extra support I have this thin piece of metal. I'll probably bolt you know to it and screw it to this just to be on the safe side. But like I said, this should turn out pretty solid. The hardware that I'm gonna end up using is just really small machine screws. I just got a flat washer and we'll put these through like that and like I said, these are gonna line up with those holes right on our factory metal bracket there. So I'll drop this down and on the bottom side put another flat washer and a nut. So I get those two going and like I said that'd probably be all right but I still gotta come up with something to kind of configure our other little support bracket that we're gonna come up with here. So go ahead and I'll get this going. So I was able to get our controller mounted up and this is how it turned out. Worked out pretty good. Did it just like we talked about using those bolts to kind of secure everything and with that little extra piece of metal that support that I put on this side just for good measure with that I just used a self-tapping screw to kind of secure it to this beam here. So you know, not going anywhere. What you can do now is take this style of cable, all right and I think just 'cause we don't have a ton of space here when that metal piece will go back up, I think I'm gonna use this 90 degree one that we'll just plug right into there. And then on the other side of the brake controller we can plug this connector in. Looking back at it now I probably should have plugged it in before we mounted it but not a big deal. It can still be done. I'll get my hand up there and get it plugged into the back. So when you go to plug this in this part, all right, that's going to be down. So the flat part of the plug will be facing up and can't really mess it up. Just plugs right into the controller. Plan to spot to mount up our control knob. You know, you got a lot of choices on where you can put it, really just depends on how much work you want to put into it and how custom you want to get so to speak. What I think we're gonna do is if you we're to fold this panel up, think I'm gonna put it right here in this area. All right 'Cause it works good. It's outta the way. You can still see it and get to it and you won't have to completely hack up our panel. There's a thin opening here where this should be able to fit. I can drill through that and whatnot. The only issue is, so if you got your plate back up here this part's gonna block for this switch that's gonna set. And so what I think I'm gonna do is just kind of trim a little bit of this material out and it's not gonna hurt anything and it'll give us the space that we need to get everything to fit back here. Marked where we can trim, this should provide sufficient space and I might even looking at it now I might even just run it all the way down here cut this whole piece off but pretty thick metal. So I'm gonna use a Dremel tool. You could use a cutoff wheel kind of whatever you find appropriate to get this removed. (saw grinding) With our panel trimmed, I just kind of roughly put it in place and I'm not actually bolting anything back up yet. Just kind of test fitting it and make sure it fits. But looks like we'll have sufficient room now for our switch to clear and where I'm gonna mount that up on the panel is where this plastic insert goes. Essentially if we just file that straight down somewhere in this area here is where we're gonna drill out and get our switch mounted up. To make modifying our panel just a little bit easier I'm just gonna remove it 'cause it really looks like the only thing holding it is a couple of clips and some wiring which might be easier to unplug 'em first actually. So to unplug 'em, just push down on the center and get 'em unsnapped. That one was a little easier to push with the tool there. And what I'm using is a trim tool just makes it a little easier but flathead screwdriver will work too. There's just this one last deal here, pry that off, and then we should be able to just push those tabs in that way we can kind of set this on our tool bench or the ground and make it a little easier to drill out our opening. So the back of our panel I put some painters tape, that way we can mark it and this little push snap here, I just went straight down from it and about even with this one kind of centered it up. And then I used this as a template. This little ring and set that up and you want this part here this little nipple to be in the 12 o'clock position. So just line that up, you know, and made a mark there where we can drill. So I'll start with the larger one make sure we get it centered there and drill it out. (drill grinding) And you can come back to that smaller one. We change bit out and drill it out. (drill grinding) So yeah, the holes drilled out, everything looks pretty good. A lot of times too don't be surprised, you know, when you go to put everything together, if you have to kind of clean it up a little bit or file just a little more plastic out to get everything to fit. And so we have a couple of choices here what we can do because of the thickness of the panel it's kinda right on that threshold where if you use this ring, all right, so this could snap in here, line up, you put the switch through. Problem is if you use that, the little locking nut that threads onto the switch, it won't go all the way down and pull the switch tight to the panel. So if you're wanting to use this, what you could do is come back and sand some material off this area here to make it thinner to allow that switch to pull all the way in tight. What I've done in the past, instead of doing that I won't even use this. It's really not completely necessary to be quite honest with you because as long as you drill that hole right the little light on the switch will fit right in there really good. So that's what we're gonna do. This'll line up, all right, and then this little retainer or this nut you can thread that on. And be careful while you're doing this. You know, this is easy to cross thread so make sure it catches good. If you're, you know, having to fight it at all or anything, just slow down and take your time and make sure it's on there. But with this you don't have to crank down on it by any means. What I like to do is take a 12 millimeter socket, snug it up by hand. So that's what we're looking for there. On this dial you want to turn it all the way to the left or counter-clockwise and then take your knob, alright, and that's going to have numbers on it you want the zero to be in line with the light there. Just push that on. Back inside the vehicle now I just put our plastic panel back on, plugged everything back in the opposite way that we removed it. Now you can take the other end of this cable and simply just plug it into the switch there. And once that is complete what I'm gonna do is kind of come back, we got some of our loose wires and stuff I'm just gonna kind of bundle 'em up and zip tie 'em out of the way. So I got our wires just kind of zip tied up off to the side, you know, make sure they're not hanging where you get caught up in your steering column or your brake pedal or anything like that. So pretty easy to look out for. Give yourself a little, you know, extra length here. That way it's not pulling on the switch. But from here we're just going to reinstall our metal panel the opposite way that we removed it. Where we cut there, that edge just kind of sharp. So I just took a piece of wire loom, put it over our cable just to give it a little extra something if the wire goes in there weird and ends up rubbing on that or anything. Now we'll just kind of carefully taut everything into position and snap our panel back into place. So at this point, you know, you can plug into your trailer and this should power up. You can see now it's kind of flashing between green and blue. And more or less what that means is we need to calibrate this. So a couple ways you can do it. The way that I like to do it is just drive around without a trailer or anything just like you normally would. You know, get up to speed, make some stops. Usually don't take too long. Once it's calibrated it'll stay a solid blue color and that's when you know it's completely calibrated. Or you can leave your trailer connected too, drive around and make the stops. Like I said, I like to do it without the trailer 'cause I'd rather know that our brake controller is calibrated and working perfect before we drive a trailer around. So that's what we'll go ahead and do now. So I drove around for a minute and it probably took 10 or 12 braking sequences to get this to calibrate. So we got our solid blue color now. I wanna mention too, if you do this without being plugged into a trailer, you're not gonna have lights coming on and everything so you'll just kind of have to guess, you know, do 10, 20 braking procedures, come back, plug it in. If it's solid, solid blue, you're good. If not, if it's still blinking you'll have to get out and do it again. So that's kind of one of the benefits if you have your trailer hooked up, you can see it in real time because then you'll know exactly when that light turns solid blue. Now it's a good idea just to test this to make sure it's working. So I plugged into a test box at the back of our truck, plugged it in our 7-way and that's gonna simulate a trailer. For those of you at home, you know, you should be able to do this with your trailer but keep in mind if your trailer has any issues might mislead you and thinking it's something you did on this side. So a couple ways we could test this. You can dial that knob up to, we'll just go 10 and if you push down on it, that'll be the manual override. You can see it turning red. So power in theory should be being sent back and we'll do the same if we push our brake pedal down, you'll see it's going red. And so while we're doing this we'll look at our tester and make sure we're getting power sent back. Looking at our tester, you know, if we push down on our brake our knob is turning red and we're getting power sent back here so we know we're in good shape. And that'll finish up our look at and our installation of the RREDARC Tow Pro Liberty Trailer Brake Controller on our 2018 Ford F-150.