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This proportional brake controller automatically syncs to your vehicle's computer network for smooth, precise braking. Low-speed brake adjustment gives you 2 settings for different speeds. Plug-and-play controller mounts in any direction.
Features:
Specs:
The Tuson DirecLink is unique in that it connects directly to your vehicle's computer network, constantly reading data from your vehicle to give you proportional braking. Proportional braking means that your trailer brakes mimic your tow vehicle's brakes. Using multiple data parameters, this brake controller will analyze your tow vehicle's braking and momentum. It will then send out enough power to your trailer brakes so that they are activated with an intensity that matches. The result is uniform braking across your towing setup, saving wear and tear on the tires and brakes of your trailer. No push-pull action - just smooth, proportional braking every time.
With the main unit mounted out of sight, the remote puts control of your trailer's brakes right in your hand. In addition to offering fast and easy power adjustment and a manual override, it keeps your cab clutter-free and your towing experience simple.
Using the up and down buttons on the handy remote, select the brake scale for your trailer. This will set the amount of power the brake controller sends to your trailer to bring it to a stop; how much you'll need will depend on the weight of your trailer. You'll want to set the brake scale as high as you can without locking up the brakes. There is no need to adjust this setting unless you are going from an empty trailer to a fully loaded trailer or vice versa.
The remote also puts the manual override right in your hand, great for stopping sway or controlling your trailer's momentum in emergencies. To engage the manual override, just press the trigger. This will 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.
The DirecLink has a unique feature to make your braking smoother: low-speed braking adjustment. When you're cruising on the highway, you need a different amount of braking power to slow your trailer than when you're driving slowly through town. The low-speed braking adjustment on this controller adds the option of a secondary setting to the brake scale. Use the sub-menu on the remote to set the low-speed setting. The DirecLink will use this level of braking scale whenever you're towing below 30 mph, so you have smooth, safe, and comfortable braking at any speed.
In addition to the essentials of towing, the Tuson DirecLink has an extensive menu of extra features for configuring the controller to suit your needs and preferences.
At the standard brake scale setting, the DirecLink offers 20 levels of braking. This is designed for trailers less than 10,000 lbs. For trailers more than 10,000 lbs, the DirecLink has an additional 20 levels to choose from, making 40 total, so you have more flexibility to find just the right brake scale for your larger trailer.
When you're waiting at a red light or stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic, you don't need your trailer brakes on at full power. The longer you sit there, the more likely they are to overheat. To keep your trailer's brakes from wearing out prematurely, you can set a different braking level for when your vehicle is stopped. You can set it between 5% and 30% of the full brake scale, and that will keep your vehicle and trailer in place on a steep grade or a slippery boat ramp without overdoing it.
The maximum brake limit feature lets you fine-tune your braking so you can find the perfect blend of safe and comfortable braking. It allows you to set a high braking level for your manual override, especially important for large and heavy-duty trailers, while moderating your normal-use braking. So if your brakes lock up at 75% of your set brake scale, you can dial the maximum brake limit back to 70%, while still having 100% braking power available for an emergency. You can tow with peace of mind without sacrificing a comfortable ride.
Because the DirecLink is direcly connected to your vehicle's computer, it is able to access its data and offer a large range of diagnostics, including:
The DirecLink offers an easy, plug-and-play installation. First, splice the ends of the two included pigtail harnesses together. This will let you connect the controller to your vehicle so it knows when you're braking. Once you have the two harnesses connected, just plug the custom end into the port on your vehicle's built-in brake control wiring harness, which sits beneath your vehicle's dashboard. To reach the connector, remove the storage pocket that is built into the center of your dash, just above the ashtray. Once you have removed the pocket, you will see the gray, 4-pin connector that mates with the adapter. Then plug the other end into the DirecLink. The harness with the OBD connection also plugs into the controller and then connects to your vehicle's computer by plugging into your OBD-II port. Once you plug this harness in, the DirecLink will automatically configure to your vehicle's system.
The DirecLink can be mounted at any orientation, so you can install it wherever's convenient for you. Use the included cable ties and the corner holes to secure the main unit to a stable location where it won't shift or move. The remote comes with a flush dash mount and a swivel dash mount with adhesive so you can put it on your dash with no drilling required.
See etrailer.com's exclusive 7-way upgrade kit for brake controller installation (ETBC7 - sold separately) if you don't already have a 7-way plug at the back of your vehicle.
Videos are provided as a guide only. Refer to manufacturer installation instructions and specs for complete information.
Hey guys, Kevin here with etrailer and today I'm gonna be showing you how to install the Tucson DirecLink Trailer Brake Controller here on our 2018 Chevy Silverado 1500. Up top here you can see it's going to revert back to our brake sensitivity and there's gonna be 20 different sensitivity levels, depending on if your trailer is above or below 10,000 pounds gross vehicle weight rating, so you can easily adjust that up and down. (button beeping) And then also we can go to the side here and that's gonna give us our low speed brake. So essentially if you're going at a low speed, you don't have to worry about the brakes fully actuating. This is basically just gonna kind of get you a more smoother braking power whenever you're driving through the city or maybe you're hitting a whole lot of stop lights and you don't really wanna have it slam on the brakes every single time, you can adjust this, get a little bit lower, and then we also have our max brake limit. And so right now I got that just said at 20%, but obviously you could change that as well.
If you need to change any of the settings while you're on these pages, you wanna click in that center and then you can adjust it. And up top you can see that's where we're currently at. The bottom one is gonna be what we're changing it to. But for our purposes, I'm just gonna leave it at 20%. If we click over a few more times, we can see our trans temperature.
So because we're hooked into the OBD2 sensor with our control module, it's gonna track a few different things. It's going to have your power connections, your brake switch voltage, your blue wire output, so the output to your brakes itself. It's gonna check the engine RPM, so that's how it's gonna know whether or not you're at a slow speed or if you're up at highway speeds. It's also going to get that transmission temperature, which you we're seeing right here. And then there's just a few other connections that it can kind of check and then if you have any issues, it's gonna pop up down here in that center portion and tell you if there's any issues.
This brake controller works with electric or electric over hydraulic brake actuators. Not every electric brake controller does work with electric over hydraulic, so this one is gonna stand out. Since it's gonna let you work with both, so if you ever switch your trailer over from electric to disc brakes and you need that electric over hydraulic, you don't have to swap out your brake controller. It's also gonna work with trailers with up to four axles. Most of the time when you see these electric or electric over hydraulic brake controllers, it's only gonna give you usually two or three axles, so this one's gonna give you quite a bit more capacity.
Typically with a proportional brake controller, it's going to have an inertia sensor in it so that it knows when you're starting to decelerate. With this one, it doesn't just because it's going to hook into the OBD2 sensor and it already knows what the RPM of your engine's at. So it knows when you're decelerating so you don't ever have to worry about that inertia sensor ever being damaged or maybe just improperly functioning. A lot of the times if you have a proportional brake controller with one and you don't have it at a certain angle or if it gets knocked maybe when you're getting in and out of your truck and you accidentally hit it with your knee, you can kind of just throw it off and then that can end up causing issues with your brake controller. This, you just don't have to worry about it. Now we've gone over some of the features of our DirecLink, let's go ahead and show you how we installed it. For the first step of our installation, we're gonna need to find a good spot for our control module to sit. Now, typically with these kind of brake controllers and other similar ones like the REDARC, Tow-Pro, Elite or Liberty, they have a separate control module that you can kind of tuck off to the side and then just have that small little control knob to actually work the brake controller. So typically what I like to do is come down to the bottom of the dash right here. There's gonna be a little box with some plugin ports. You can typically just mount that up on there. On ours it is a little big, it's not really gonna match up too well with our holes, so we are gonna have to kind of rig this a little bit different. I probably will end up zip tying just one side through. So you can go ahead and take this off. We're gonna drill a couple holes. Go ahead and grab yourself a marker or something so you can kind of mark out exactly where those bracket holes are on your control module. All right, now I've got these two holes marked out, we can go ahead and just drill that out. (drill whining) All right, so I ended up changing my mind. I'm gonna move 'em down just to the edge just so it's just past that, that way it's not blocking any larger ports. Go ahead and drill that out. (drill whining) Now the holes are drilled out, we can go ahead and zip tie it. I'm just gonna run it so that the clip portion of the zip tie's on the inside here. Place that through. And if you really wanted to, you could also use some nuts and bolts instead. I just find zip ties are a lot easier and they're not really gonna ever be under any tension to where they could break. Put them in, tighten it down and then we'll just repeat this on the other side. So before we get back in the cab, I just wanna talk about some of these wiring harnesses that are gonna come with your kit just 'cause it's a little bit easier to see it while we're out here. So right here we're gonna have this wiring harness. It's gonna hook into our OBD2 sensor and it's gonna get a bunch of different stats from our vehicle as we're towing and it's gonna give you a whole bunch of useful information. So you can pop that on. You're gonna wanna make sure that you kind of screw down those connectors on there too and that's gonna hold it in place, prevent it from being able to pop off or get a loose connection. And set that to the side. And then for our controller, so we're gonna have two different sets of wires, so if you really wanted to kind of hide this in your dash and you had to go quite a long ways, then you would go ahead and go with that one, or you can go with this one. It's got kind of that curl in it and kind of just gives you easy access to it and that's gonna be the one that we use today just 'cause of where our neighbor wants this controller placed inside of their Silverado. Last but not least, there's also going to be our wiring harness. Now if you wanna do it the hard way, you can go ahead and splice this in, or the preferred way, for our Silverado, we do have a plugin option so all we'll have to do is just match up our wiring for our harness that comes with our kit with our plugin adapter, but if you do wanna splice it in, you're gonna have four wires. Your black is gonna be your power, your white will be your ground, your blue will be for your trailer brakes, and then your red is going to hook into the brake light switch wire. To make things easier, I'm just gonna go ahead and connect this all right now, that way I'm not having to do it under the dash. So we'll just take a butt connector. You're gonna get a few with your wiring harness adapter if you do choose to buy that, but if not, you can go ahead and just pick up some here as well. Just crimp those all on. And then connect them up to our wiring harness adapter. Last, I'm gonna go ahead and pop on our flying harness onto here and then we will go ahead and start plugging it in inside of our vehicle. We're gonna have a couple little different ports on here, but we're gonna wanna make sure that we choose this one right here. We'll have our little retention clip to the left and then we'll go ahead and just pop that right in. And then we can push our cover kind of back in place. We're gonna have to kind of fight these wires just a bit and then we're gonna zip tie 'em up out of the way so you don't want that kind of hanging down right now. I'm gonna kind of just push 'em up just so that we can get the cover back in place. (cover clicks) All right, with that back in place, we can go ahead and take our OBD2 sensor wire and we'll plug that right in. And then I'm gonna grab some zip ties and kind of just bundle up all this wiring so that it doesn't interfere with our brake or our gas pedal. Lastly, we'll just need to hook in our cable for our controller, pop that in. And then we're gonna run it up over right over here and use our little mount that comes with it. It's just gonna be a little stick-on piece that all you have to do is just peel back the adhesive backing and then you can kind of just press it anywhere on your dash. So I think we'll go ahead and we'll put it right about here. That way it's easily within reach, but it's not gonna be in the way. If you wanna go the extra mile, you can also just sneak it right up through your dash here. That way you don't have to worry about this kind of dangling down near the brake pedal, and then pop it into place. Now way we have our installation complete, we can go ahead and take it out, hook up to a trailer and give you a little test. So now we're hooked up to a trailer. We can see right in the corner right here it's gonna say C and that stands for connected. If we weren't, it would say NC. Right in the middle right here is our fault little diagnostics portion and that's just saying okay right now 'cause there's just nothing wrong with our trailer connection, but if there was, then we can go ahead and take whatever error code it gives us, look in our instruction manual, and figure out exactly what we need to fix. So now we're gonna go ahead and just drive a little bit. We'll see when I press on the brakes, it's gonna start showing the output. So right now, since we're at a low speed, I've also got it set really low. It's not gonna be putting out as much. We don't really need too much braking power. We don't want it to kind of lock the brakes up and have us kind of clang up against our ball mount here. Now your settings aren't going to matter at all if you do the manual override, so you've got a little bit of trailer sway and you just need to kind of correct that. When you press on this, this will go all the way up to 100. So right now I got my foot away from the brakes and I'm just gonna have our trailer stop us just to show. But yeah, they can go all the way up to 100 and back down. Well, that about does it for today's installation of the Tucson DirecLink Trailer Brake Controller here on our 2018 Chevy Silverado 1500. My name's Kevin. Thanks for watching.
Works flawless on my 2022 Western Star HDT. Towing a very heavy 22k lb RV and everything else I own means I dont take short cuts. This product is the top standard for break controllers.
Make sure you read into it further to make sure you are buying all the parts needed to make it work. Will need to add another Tuson Heavy Duty Truck Module Kit for DirecLink Brake Controller - 16 Pin 335HDCON-16PIN to make it work on HD Trucks.
Thank you Amy for making sure thst my items arrive on time. Excellent customer service.
Service was great. Product works well
Bought a direct link brake controller and 9 pin for my semi hdt. Clearly the brake controller is used. It’s scuffed and scratched to death. No packaging. Just loosely Theon in a box. Looks like someone used a screwdriver to disconnect one of thr ports. $[XX] for used parts? Pathetic. I’ll never buy from this co again. If I didn’t need it for my trip in 3 days I’d send it back and get a refund. I’m beyond mad.
Perfect for my application.
This was a great replacement for the factory wiring. The OEM wiring that came with the Tahoe was about three times longer than it needed to be. This replacement was the perfect length. The connector fit perfectly. The wire gauge was heavier duty than the OEM. The only things I didn't use in the kit were the crimp connectors. I chose to solder.
Fast shipping and overall quality is great! Would have loved to have had a wiring diagram shipped with the harness but was able to find that online. If I need any additional towing items I'll be stopping at etrailer.com first!
Exactly as advertised. I used this unit to create a plug-and-play installation for my new TowPro Elite Trailer Brake Controller. Item arrived exactly as advertised, was exact fit for my 2006 Chevy Avalanche.
This was very easy to install and wire up. What was not easy was figuring out why I can manually apply my trailer brakes but they do not work when I use the brake pedal. Apparently this is common with early 2000’s GM trucks. The technical people at etrailer were unable to help and I was stuck doing it on my own. Disappointed.
This trailer brake controller works great. On my chevy silverado truck.
Great controller and easy to use. The hand held feature makes this tremendously easier to utilize especially through the mountain passes along with being less obtrusive when not in use as you can just disconnect the controller and put it in your storage compartment.
Very nice, nice installation looks nice and works well. Installation very easy
Have a 6 year old unit in my 2001 7.3. Kept Old Red and bought a new truck. Tired of factory brake failures and underperformance. Replaced with DirecLink. The low speed braking and holding brakes are available nowhere else. Awesome Tech Support.
Instructions are poor, need a wire diag ram
This product is excellent for the Simi Truck conversion. It works seamlessly with the Jackalopee as the interface to my Fifth Wheel.
Perfect match, and the instructions were exact. I installed the controller in less than 1/2 hour
The video comparing controllers was very helpful also.
Thank you
Complicated to install - used mechanics shop for install - had the wrong OBD interface cable initially, delayed / complicated further.
Unit functions well. Happy with it overall and would recommend it.
Manufacturer and e-trailer were readily available to provide extra support.
Best brake controller money can buy
Haven't installed it yet, but I'm sure it will work. As usual wth etrailer, easy look up, quick delivery, quality products at very good price. Will keep using them and highly recommend.
Michelle V went above and beyond to research the items I was needing to ensure I ordered the correct model for my truck. Parts were promptly delivered in a well packed box. Install was straight forward and went well. Thank you Michelle!
Everything arrived before due date and was well packaging. You all rock, and also, the items are good. . Best place to order all your trailer and truck accessories.
Great products and fast shipping..
Instructions are poor needs a diagram with what wire go's where and instructions that tell you this. As they are now you can only be sure about 2 wires.
Easy to install. Followed the directions and watched a video online. Took me less than thirty minutes.
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