Bright Way Push-to-Test Trailer Breakaway Kit w/ 12V, 5-Amp-Hr Battery and 1-Amp Charger - Side Load

Video Transcript for Bright Way Push-to-Test Trailer Breakaway Kit Review and Installation

Randy: Hey guys. It's Randy here at etailer.com. Today we're taking a look at a new Push to Test Breakaway kit that we have available. Now these breakaway kits are really important for trailering loads. Anytime you've got brakes on your trailer depending on the weight from state to state, breakaway kits so are going to be required.Now these are going to give power. There's a battery in our box here.

These are going to give power to our brakes in the event of an accidental disconnection. So we're heading down the road. We didn't secure our coupler, something breaks, something happens, our trailer becomes disconnected from our vehicle. Instead of it just going on its own volition, wherever it wants to go, as soon as the pen is pulled right here, which your tow vehicle do, that cable gets connected to your vehicle, it applies the brakes. That's going to keep everything a lot safer.As soon as that disconnection happens, those breaks come on.

Everything gets slowed down really quickly and again, like we said, this is a requirement in most states that's going to depend on the weight of the vehicle, but something that is always recommended, especially if you're going to haul from state to state, is just to get a properly working kit on there so your bases are covered. So regardless if you're going through the south, the Northwest, the Northeast, through the Midwest, you'll have all of your bases covered.Now regardless of whether you use the front load, like what we have here, or the top load where the cover opens on the top, we'll show you both of those in just a minute, they're both going to have the 12 volt, five amp battery in them. That's going to be very effective for single axle trailers and double axle trailers. If you have an application that requires more than that, maybe you're using an electric over hydraulic system or a triple axle trailer, you'll want a kit that has a little bit bigger battery in it, but for the one and two axle configurations, this is going to be an ideal solution.Something else that I really like about this one that we don't always see out of other ones is that there is a built in charger. So as you're connected to the seven pole on your truck, as long as it has the working 12 volt set power supply coming back to your trailer, it's always going keep our battery fully charged.

We also have the push to test feature right here. You can see by pushing that, we've got ours fully charged. It can indicate recharge and it'll tell you when it's charging. So if your recharge light comes on, you'll know you'll need to connect it to your truck for a few minutes. Let this get some juice in it and continue charging so your battery will be good and active in the event that you have a separation.Something else I really like about this kit, when we compare it to other kits that we have available, you see we've got a really good quality sticker here on the front of it, but it's color coded.

It shows exactly where each wire needs to go. So if we're out on the road, something happens to our seven pole, we have to replace it. We're not going to have to try to look it up online or try to figure out how to get this wired up. Everything's right there. Very easy to see, very easy to understand, and very easy to get connected.Now on both of the boxes, I like the design of the housing here for our battery and our charger. It's right in line with the way it feels and what you'd expect from a breakaway kit. The tabs seem to be a little bit easier to get to when we had it when we're mounting it up. Now just like most of the kits, no hardware is going to be supplied, so whatever your application is, whatever type of hardware you're going to use, be sure to have that on hand so you can get your job done. Rather than just clipping closed, we've got a release clip here. We've also got two screws on both of them, whether it's the front or the top load that allows you to get in there and access that battery. Although the way it's sealed up, I don't think you're going to have to worry about moisture and corrosion and things like that in there. So it's really going to be pretty maintenance-free.The breakaway switch here, kind of along the same lines, really nice and sturdy. Uses a single hole attachment back here, which I'm also using for my ground wire, so you can kind of just have to drill one hole there and then the four for attaching the breakaway battery itself. The cable also has a really good length, so by mounting this pretty close to the front of the tongue, you'd get plenty of room to get this attached to your vehicle. You'll see it's a loop on the end here. These generally need to be connected to the frame of your truck, which includes your receiver hitch or a portion of the truck. We don't want to connect these to safety chains. We don't want to connect them to say the coupler or something like that. You don't want to connect them to the ball on your receiver tube to where it comes out. Basically to your safety chain connection points or around the receiver of the hitch.Now I would generally use a carabiner for that. I just have a little quick clip on here so I could just reach up, click it right onto my safety chain connection point there. If you didn't want to do that, you can pull the pin, loop it around, and then just pass it through to where it'll create kind of like a cinch for you to come down and on. That's kind of going to be up to you and how you want to get that done, but definitely by having a carabiner and it's going to make it a little bit quicker and a little bit easier.And I think this is going to be a really good solution in breakaway kit. I like the design of it. I would definitely put one on my trailer and it's going to come in really handy for those one or two axle applications. Remember, it's not a triple axle set up, but whether you're rebuilding an old trailer and it's got an old breakaway kit on it, maybe the one you've got has failed or you're just looking to get your current trailer up to specifications or to make it legal. It gets you in a safer situation. When the trailer breaks away and it doesn't have a breakaway kit, there's no telling where this trailer is going to wind up when it's all said and done. That can create a lot of liability for you. By having a breakaway kit put on here, it gives you that extra level of safety and it's going to help ensure if something like that does happen, it's not going to be a major, major event. It'll be something that's a little bit more controlled. Hopefully it just winds up in the ditch or in the median, rightNow one thing to keep in mind, in order to keep the battery charged up, you need to have 12 volt power coming through your vehicle through your seven way plug. That's generally going to be there already if you have a seven pole round plug in the back of your vehicle. In some instances though, you might have to put a fuse or something like that in to complete that circuit and get the power back. The thing about not having power is it's not recharging your battery and of course, we're not using this battery regularly. This isn't going to be something that constantly has a load, so it should stay charged for you for quite awhile, but do ensure you've got that 12 volt power so it maintains that battery keeps a nice charge to us. We won't have to worry about operation and the unfortunate time we might need it.Now choosing the correct box for your application, it's really going to depend on the position in which you want place it. I'm going to be using this one, the front load type, so this door is gonna open this way or I'm sorry it's going to open this way, but regardless of that I'm mounting it right to the front of this box here. I will be able to open us up to gain access to anything inside.If you're going to be mounting it in a different location, this lid's going to open this way. So this is the top load design. That's the only difference in the two kits. If I we're to put that one here, I need to open that up and get into it, this may actually make contact here, so this would be better suited if we're going to mount it something like this on this side of the trailer. That way that box has plenty of room to open up and we can still get to everything inside if need be, which is very seldom, but you'd hate to have to uninstall this just to switch something out and then reinstall it.Now once you've chosen your mounting location, we'll use our attachment points here. These are quarter inch holes, so you want to use quarter inch hardware. We'll mark it out right here in the front of our box. We'll get our holes drilled and get it installed. All right, then we'll just get it attached once we've got ll of our fasteners started there. Get it tightened down. If you can, use all four of the mounting holes. It's going to give you the best security on your trailer. Once we get this done, we'll move on to getting the breakaway switch itself mounted.Now the thing to keep in mind with your mounting location here and just general good rule of thumb bis we want this to be in pretty close proximity to the breakaway battery. We're going to run one of these wires to it. Now this is going to be plenty close. It also needs to be close enough to your vehicle that we can attach our tether to it. This needs to attach to the frame or a trailer hitch of your vehicle, not your safety chains so that if in the event your trailer does separate, this will get pulled out. So be sure you've got enough length to attach there.And another thing when mounting your box, just as a heads up, if you're going to be running this to a junction box, you need to mount this either close enough to your junction box to run the wires to it or have some extra wire and some butt connectors so you can extend these. We're going to be tying ours in directly to our seven pole wire here. Loop it up here. We'll make our connections, tape it up, and put it down so we're not too worried about the length. Everything's nice and close, but in your application do keep that in mind to ensure you have what you need.To install our breakaway switch, we're going to use a number 12 self tapping screw. Go right on the side of the trailer here. Get my mark started, then we'll get it finished off and really mount it up. All right. Nice and solid.There something I like to do when I do my wiring. You can see I've kind of pre-taped this off a little bit, just down into that area and I pre-taped the back of my breakaway switch just a little bit. That's just more for appearance sakes because I don't like two different color wires kind of running over here and laying down. So that's going to be up to you. It doesn't change the install process at all.Again, we're going to be going to our seven pole wiring right here. If you're going to a junction box, use the wires designated for what it asks for, which is going to be white to ground. The red needs to go to the 12 volt power supply coming back from your vehicle. This is going to be what charges our battery up. The blue one is going to go to the blue side of our breakaway switch, and then our black wire, the one that comes out of our breakaway switch, that's going to go to the brake signal that goes to our trailer and activates our brakes.So am I to do is just split through the outer sheathing here. I don't want to get all the way into where I do any damage to the wires laying in underneath this. Let's just make sure we can open it up here gently. Now once we've got access into our wires there, we need to find the 12 volt signal like we talked about. In ours, it happens to be the black wire. It may be a little bit different in your application. So just check that out and ensure. Bring that down so I have a little bit of flexibility in it.I'm going to strip back each end of it. We're going to add, in our case it's a little bit larger wire, so we're going to use a 10 to 12 gauge butt connector, part number DW05745. for the smaller wire connections we're going to make, part number is going to be DW05744, just to give you a heads up. Those are heat shrink, so it's really going to give you the proper protection you're going to need on these external connections.That's our red wire. Again, goes to that 12 volt coming from our vehicle. I like to get those spliced together, twist them up really well. Now we'll slide our larger butt connector down and over, make sure it gets a good connection and once you're sure both your wires are in there the right way, just get a good crimp on it. Pull on both wires, make sure they're in there securely and of course, we're going to reconnect it to that. That makes a splice for us. We don't have to worry about quick splice connectors or anything like that that generally fail on us.Next, we get our blue wire here. That's the signal for our breaks, but again, check yours. Now remember the black wire that comes from our switch that's going to go to our brake signal wire. So we're going to take that black wire and we're going to splice these two together just like we did the black with the red.Now once our connections are made, it's time to shrink them down. Just going to apply heat. You can use a heat gun, a lighter like what I'm using here, or you can use a mini torch. Just key is not to overheat them. You'll see it's going to turn clear. This begins to shrink down and then when we get them shrank down fully, it'd be a little bit of clear gel that comes out at the end there.And now we're just going to connect the blue wire coming out of the breakaway box itself to the blue wire coming from our breakaway switch. That's essentially putting power at that switch. And then when that breakaway plug gets pulled, that conducts the power through and out to the brake. So it has power to flow through here, holds it at the switch, and then when needed, it goes back to the brakes to get everything stopped for us.You can see here for our ground just using a ring terminal right behind our breakaway stud and at that point you can just tuck this stuff back down and under. A little bit of a tight squeeze there, but it'll go. And it should give us a nice clean look. We'll be ready to test it out.Now to test out the system, just going to get one of our wheels in the air. We're going to begin to spin it and then we'll want to have somebody pull the pin for us as we do. Works pretty effectively. Has the tire locked up. Now we're going to leave that out and for DOT compliance standards, this needs to hold for 15 minutes. So what we'll do, let it sit 15 minutes. We're going to come back check, make sure everything's still holding nice and tight. As long as it is, we're going to be ready to hit the road.All right. We've let this go a little while. As you can see, it's still holding nice and tight. It's been probably closer to 20 minutes than 15 minutes now, but what I'd like to do just to 100% confirm everything's working the way it should. We'll have the pen put back in in the front, and then our brakes should release. You can see as soon as that pin goes in, right back to normal operation.