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 time-delayed brake controller is designed to mount at any angle, even upside down. The controls are all up front for easy access, including a slide-bar manual override and a thumbwheel for braking output. LED indicator shows your braking status.
Features:
Specs:
The Tekonsha POD is designed to mount in any direction, and it's especially suited for mounting on near-vertical dashes. All the controls are on the front of the module, so you can still access them with the controller tucked away in a convenient place.
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 set the braking output as high as you can without locking up the brakes. Once you've set up the brake controller the first time, you shouldn't need to adjust the settings until the trailer load changes, you switch trailers, or road conditions change. Use the thumbwheel on the side to change the braking output level. The output setting will appear as a number on the digital display, with a higher number indicating higher braking power.
The Tekonsha POD keeps the manual override within easy reach on the front of the module, great for stopping sway or controlling your trailer's momentum in emergencies. Push the slide-bar lever to activate the trailer's brakes and brake lights without you having to apply the brakes on your tow vehicle, perfect for limiting trailer movement while you're cruising.
Because inertia plays no role in the functioning of this controller, you do not have to mount the unit at any particular angle. Your mounting options are limitless, with the controller designed with all of the controls on the front of the module so you can access them even if it's mounted upside down.
The included custom adapter plugs into the connector on your vehicle's built-in brake control wiring harness, which is underneath your dash, to the left of the steering column, taped to another harness near the emergency brake pedal. Once you have the wiring connected to your vehicle, just plug the other end into the POD. Because there are no wires to splice, installation is not permanent. You can unplug and remove the brake controller at any time and securely stow it away.
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).
The Tekonsha POD comes equipped with time-delayed braking. Every time you apply the brakes in your vehicle, a signal is sent - via the brake switch - to the POD. The controller then sends power out to your trailer brakes to activate them with an intensity set by you, at a rate determined by you. The amount of braking power (output) can be adjusted to suit your preference, the road conditions, the type of trailer, and the weight of your load. To determine which levels are best for your application, test your towing setup and choose what feels right.
Alternate Instructions
California residents: click here
Videos are provided as a guide only. Refer to manufacturer installation instructions and specs for complete information.
Hey everybody, Ryan here at etrailer. Today on our 2015 Toyota 4Runner we're gonna be taking a look at and showing you how to install the Tekonsha PowerTrac brake controller. And we're gonna be installing that in conjunction with the Tekonsha brake controller adapter plug. When it comes to the 4Runner, people use these to do a ton of different things, and I can see why. They're awesome vehicles, really reliable and very capable. And that's going to include pulling some pretty big trailers around, whether it be big utility trailer, camper, something along those lines.
And those larger trailers are generally gonna have trailer breaks. And so you're gonna need a way to apply those brakes and help bring you to a complete stop. That way you're not relying on your Toyota to do all the stopping whenever you're pulling, pulling that heavy trailer. And that's where a brake controller like this one's gonna come into play. What this is gonna do is send power back to your trailer's brakes and help keep everything, keep everything safe.
One of the things I like about this one is kind of how it's styled, actually. It's just a little bit different. It kind of has some different angles going on here and the face of it is flat. It's just really user friendly. It's easy to see what's going on and easy to reach everything.
You know, it's something small, but, but goes a long way in terms of having to live with it and use it, you know. I'd say it's probably, overall size it's probably medium. You know, there's some smaller, more compact ones like the Draw-Tie I-Command for example. And then there's some little bit larger ones like the Tekonsha P3. It'll kind of fall somewhere in the middle.
The thing is with this one it is a time delayed brake controller. And so what that means is it's gonna have a preset amount of power that is sent back to your brakes whenever you hit your brake pedal in your vehicle here. And, you know, that has some benefits and some downsides to the more modern proportional type break controller. One of the benefits is of the time delayed is you know what to expect. You know, you have the complete adjustability of how much power you wanna send back there. But, you know, one of the advantages the proportional one has, it's a little bit smoother, you know. Smoother of an experience generally speaking. You can usually fine tune the time delays and be really happy with it. But just to kind of throw a brake controller in and go, a proportional one's usually a little bit better. What they do is match the breaking pressure of your 4Runner. So let's say if, like, you're barely hitting the brakes in here about halfway, trailer brakes are gonna do the same thing. On the other hand, let's say if emergency stop, right So you really gotta stand on that brake pedal. Trailer brake's gotta do the same thing. So it's hard to argue with that, you know what I mean It's gotta match that pressure and be really predictable. So in terms of actually living with this I mean, super simple, you're gonna have one adjustment so you're gonna have a dial here. And you can either dial up or dial down the breaking intensity. So obviously when you go up and hit your brake, or we'll use a manual override, just kind of amplifies a little more. You can see the color is going to indicate to you how much breaking power is being applied, so green and, you know, yellowish orange, that's light power. The more power that's applied it's gonna turn turn into that deep red. And that deep red is letting us know that we have maximum power going back there. So one of the things that you can do whenever you get your trailer is hook up to it. You can hit your brake pedal and dial that knob up 'til about orange. You know, about somewhere in the middle. Kind of go from there. If you feel like the braking power's not strong enough if the trailer's kind of wanting to push you around or you feel your car kind of struggling, you know, you can always dial that up some and, and, and, and amplify it. If it's too much, if the braking's too aggressive, just dial it down some. So like I talked about earlier you can adjust this pretty good. So, you know, you find something you're happy with and you go, all right, I'm just gonna bump it up a little bit more, see how it feels. And you can really dial that in to your liking. As far as the installation goes, not bad at all. When you have the adapter, the adapter plug, essentially you plug it in to the connector down there ground it out to the body of your vehicle and mount up the brake controller. It's really about it. So shouldn't, you know, run into too many issues or or really take up a bunch of your time. But if you'd like to stick around and see how we did that feel free to. We'll go ahead and knock it out together now. To begin our installation, we're gonna be here on the driver's side of our 4Runner and we need to locate a factory connector plug which should be right underneath the dash here towards the side in this area. So the connector plug, if you look, we're gonna have a wire right here, this one is loose and this is the connector plug we're gonna be working with. Sometimes it might be, you know, taped up a little bit right here but it's gonna be in this general area. You know, the wire's only a few inches long so whether it's taped up top, taped down here, you can look right here in this area. And that's the plug that we are looking for. So now that we have our plug we can take our adapter harness. And this is really simple. One end is just gonna plug right in to the factory connector there. And then that leaves us with, on our adapter harness, there's actually a single white wire that has a pre-attached ring terminal. That's gonna need to get grounded to a metal part of our vehicle to supply an additional ground. So I'm gonna take a quick look underneath our dash and see what would be the most appropriate spot to ground this out. So I looked under our dash and one of the easiest and best spots is right here on the kick panel. It's gonna be really tricky to see. So I'm gonna explain this and then go ahead and do it and then you guys can take a close look at it. So there's a threaded hole right here on the side of the metal, and there's no hardware in it. So I'm gonna take a bolt. This is a M6 x 1.0. That's the thread pitch of the bolt. And you can use one this long, or maybe even a little bit shorter, but I'm gonna put that through the ring terminal, and then tighten it down into the hole. And that's going to provide us with the ground that we need. If you don't have this bolt, or you don't feel like going to the hardware store, you know, you can always use a self tapping screw and find a piece of metal to secure this to. That'll work as well. I do want to give you a trick here though. So in our case, the head of the bolt's a 10 millimeter so trying to do this and with keeping this from falling out can be kind of tricky. So if you have a magnet, a magnetized socket, great. A lot of people probably aren't gonna have that though. So one thing you can do is take a piece of paper towel And kind of put that in with the bolt and that's gonna keep it really tight and prevent that from falling out. So I'm gonna go ahead, get this done. I'll show you how it turned out. So I went ahead and got our ground wire secured and this is what it looks like. Piece of the paper towel kinda got stuck to it. Not really a huge deal. It's not interfering with our ground or isn't gonna mess with it at all. So as long as you have that metal to metal contact you'll be in pretty good shape. But with this part of our harness now hooked up we can grab our brake controller and simply just plug that in. So now with everything connected electrically speaking we can take our bracket and mount it up. So we actually have some holes or marks here in the dash ready. Take our bracket and the screws and secure this. When you're doing this, make sure that you're not drilling into anything important behind the dash. You know, obviously you don't wanna screw into an airbag or a wiring harness or something like that. So in this case we're in pretty good shape, pretty clear back there. So we'll get this where we want it and snug these down. You don't have to get carried away tightening them up super tight, just snug, 'cuz if you get carried away, you could strip the plastic and then you're kind of just outta luck there. And then you can grab our brake controller and in the sides of it there's gonna be holes that'll line up with the bracket. What I like to do, though, is take some of the screws, kind of get 'em started in this first. And that's because these don't have threads in 'em right out of the box and you have to give a little bit of effort, actually, to run this screw in there. And so doing this, you know, when the brake controller's in your hand makes it a lot easier as opposed to trying to line it up with the bracket and hold everything in place and do this. So we'll get the threads in, started on both sides and then we're gonna be able to hold it up to our bracket, and get the bolts or get the screws started. Kinda like to get all of them going hand tight to kind of get things started. And then once I have it positioned how I want it then I'll come back and completely snug them down. So now that the brake controller's secure, I went ahead and just kind of bundled up our wiring, tucked it up and behind our kick panel to clean up our install look. And then I also took some wire loom and just put it around the wires here that you could see to help kind of, you know, give it a factory type appearance. Don't come with wire loom but if you want some, you can grab it here at etrailer. So with all that done it's a good idea to test our brake controller to make sure it's working properly. So I just plugged in a test box \ which simulates a trailer. \ So we have a light illuminated \ so we know we're getting power. Real quick way you can check is to hit the manual override. You can see that that light is changing colors indicating to us that power is being sent back to our trailer. And that'll finish up our look at and our installation of the Tekonsha PowerTrac brake controller on our 2015 Toyota 4Runner..
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