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The Tekonsha P2 is a classic brake controller you know you can rely on. It's easy to install, and with the custom harness, it's plug-and-play.
Features:
Specs:
Gain 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.
You can adjust the gain by turning the thumbwheel on the front of the controller.
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 gain. 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 Prodigy P2 offers key safety features to prevent damage to your towing setup:
- Integrated reverse battery protection shields the brake controller and your trailer's breakaway system from shorts.
- When the P2 is not in use, it draws only 3.6 milliamps to minimize the 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.
The Prodigy P2 also runs continuous diagnostics to check for problems as they come up, including:
Installing the P2 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 P2 must be horizontally level and parallel with the direction of travel to work correctly.
With a replacement wiring harness (sold separately) and replacement bracket (P7685 - sold separately), you can even transfer the Prodigy P2 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's braking. This saves wear and tear on the tires and the brakes on both your vehicle and trailer.
The Prodigy P2 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.
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Videos are provided as a guide only. Refer to manufacturer installation instructions and specs for complete information.
Today on our 2019 Jeep Grand Cherokee, we're going to be taking a look at and showing you how to install the Tekonsha Prodigy P2 trailer brake controller. And to help us with our installation, we're going to be using the Tekonsha plug in wire adaptor for electric brake controllers.Whether we're towing a trailer for fun, or we're towing it for work, we want to know that when we're pulling it, that our trailer is going to stop. As our brake controller is going to make sure that the brakes on the trailer are working properly. Well, the P2 is going to be a proportional brake controller. What that means is whenever we apply the brakes in our Jeep, they're going to be applied at the same time and intensity on our trailer. So if we come to a stop at a stop light, easing in, our trailer brakes are going to start and engage softly.
But if we have a panic stop, we need to stop immediately, slam on the brakes, those brakes are going to apply a lot more aggressively and a lot quicker, so we can stop faster.So here's what our P2's going to look like once we have it installed. It is going to be a traditional style brake controller. So it's going to have a bracket that's going to attach to the bottom of the dash, but it is going to have somewhat of a small footprint, so it shouldn't be too hard to find a spot to mount it.Now, while the Prodigy B2 is going to be a very simple design, it's going to be very intuitive. We can just glance down, and if we see that C, we know that our trailer's hooked up properly. But in the event that our trailer was to come disconnected or we weren't sure, we're going to get an NC, letting us know that it's not connected.
The display's going to be an easy to read LCD screen, but some of our customers have mentioned that it is a little bright at night, so Tekonsha went ahead and made a few changes to the P2. There's now an auto-dimmer feature in there, that the brighter it is outside, the brighter the display. And as it starts to get darker, the display will get darker as well. So we don't have to worry about that light blinding us.Now, like most brake controllers, it is going to have a manual override. We're going to have this lever on the bottom that we can just sweep from side to side, and as I apply the pressure to it, you'll see that number go up, and when I let go it'll go down.
In the event that your trailer starts to sway when you're going down the road, you really don't want to apply the brakes on your towing vehicle, you want to apply the brakes to the trailer, so it will come back straight behind your Jeep.The knob over here is going to allow us to control our maximum gain. So if I press the manual override lever, we can see it's going up to 11, that's going to be in volts. And if I scroll down, the number is going to go down, and you can see I'm still holding it all the way over. So that's going to be the maximum amount of pressure that it's going to be applying to the brakes.The button over here is going to be for a boost. We'll have four settings: off, one, two and three.
Now, they're progressively going to get more aggressive with the braking action and ramp up to the maximum power quicker. So if you have a larger trailer, you're probably going to want to put the boost higher, but a lower, smaller trailer, you're going to want to have boost on the lower level or off.Now, a lot of our customers are comparing the P2 to some of the newer designs that are coming out that are more of a remote mount. Now, this is going to take up a little more space, but this is a tried and true design that's been used for many years, and many, many customers swear by them.Now that you see what our P2 looks like and gone over some of the features, let's show you how easy it is to get installed.To start our installation, we're going to come to the driver's side front seat, and we're going to be looking in the area right by the emergency brake pedal. If we grab our adaptor harness and we find the gray plug end, we're going to be looking for a plug that's going to match this. If we come to the emergency brake pedal, we're going to have this felt liner right here. We're just going to pull it away just a little bit so we can look up. And if we look directly up in this area, we're going to find the plug that matches this.I'm just going to take my plug and feed it up, line it up with the plug underneath the dash. Just give it a quick tug, make sure it's locked into place. Then we need to just tuck the panel back in. You just want to make sure you leave the wire sticking out so we can still have access to it.So now we can grab our brake controller and we need to find where we want to mount this. Typically, most people mount their brake controller on the passenger side of the steering wheel, but on our Jeep Grand Cherokee, there's really not a whole lot of room and this lower section is where we have our airbag. So we don't want to mess with this area at all. So we're going to be mounting our just to the left of the steering wheel, above our emergency brake pedal.Now we're going to mount it, we're going to have two different actions. We'll have this cradle style mount that we can bolt directly to the dash, or we can use the traditional style mount, which will again bolt to the dash, but it'll give us a little more angle, and we can adjust that up or down so we can get a better viewing angle of the display. So we're going to go ahead and use the traditional mount.We're going to take one of the included screws from our kit, and you want to double check behind the dash to make sure that it's not going to damage anything, but once you're sure, you want to make sure your bracket is nice and level going across, and we'll just drill right into the dash. Now the mount's nice and secure, if we grab our brake controller you can see that we're going to have two holes; one on each side. These are going to line up with the holes in the bracket, then we can take the included machine screws and tighten everything up.Then, most likely you're going to want to get the screw started by hand, and then once we know that it's started, we can come back with a bit driver or a screw driver and tighten everything up. Then we're going to take our plug, and if we look at the bottom of our brake controller, feel there, it's going to be toward the passenger side. We're going to plug in our plug into the back, and if we look, we're already getting lights on our brake controller, letting us know that it is working properly.So let's take a little bit of time and clean up all these excess wires, and tie them up underneath the dash. Then with the brake controller installed, we went ahead and plugged in a tester to make sure that everything is working. inaudible 00:06:23 manual override, you can see the number sweeping up, and we know it's working. So we're ready to hook up to our trailer and hit the road.That will finish up your look at a Tekonsha Prodigy P2 trailer brake controller on our 2019 Jeep Grand Cherokee.
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