Reverse Lockout Solenoid for Demco Hydraulic Brake Actuators - Non-Bypass

Video Transcript for An In-Depth Look at the Reverse Lockout Solenoid for Demco Hydraulic Brake Actuators

Instructor Hi there Surge Brake Coupler owners with Demco's easy-connect version. Today we're gonna be taking a look and showing you how to replace the Lockout Solenoid. So the first thing you would wanna do is get the fluid out of the system. So I actually took the leader screw at the back loose but you could also take it loose right here at the back of the actuator. It was just easier to drain into a container, towards the rear, a little bit closer to the ground, 'cause you really don't wanna get brake fluid on any painted surface. It is quite corrosive to, to paints and stuff.

Your paint will come off of there. It'll discolor 'em. So, just try to avoid that. We did place a napkin under here for when we take that loose for any of the fluid that's left in there. When you do drain it, I do recommend that you pop the cap off here.

That'll let it drain a little bit faster. Air can get in this way, and let it drain out. So, we've already let ours drain. So, we should be pretty dry at this point. So, we're gonna head over to this side and we're gonna get our hoses disconnected here, and our wiring disconnected.

Then we'll have to take out the bolts here that actually hold the entire coupler onto the trailer, because the actuator inside's not just gonna slide out of there. We'll go ahead and begin our installation right here at the back of our actuator. When you're ready to add the Lockout Solenoid, you'll need to remove the connection right here at the back of the master cylinder or brake actuator. Now, I've already gone ahead and drained the fluid from the system. I just opened one of the bleeder screws at the back.

If you open up the cap on top, the fluid will drain out a lot faster. Fully, you wanna fully pull it off there to make it drain faster. After it's done draining, I do usually thread it back on there, 'cause if there is any little bit of fluid left in there, and that does help to keep it from kind of dribbling out slower than it would if the cap was off. So, we're gonna go ahead and remove this piece here. So, we're gonna disconnect our line first. So, we're gonna hold this piece while we disconnect the line. The piece at the back of our actuator, typically, it's a half-inch in size but it does vary slightly from manufacturer to manufacturer. But for our Demco here, it is gonna be a half-inch. And the actuator we're installing is specifically designed to work with the Demco actuators. Since we actually get some components that will protect the actuator, in addition to the actuator itself. So, we also are using a line wrench whenever working with our line 'cause the metal there is going to be softer than like the head of a bolt or anything is gonna be. So, you can see you get additional surface area there. If you need line wrenches you can get some here at etrailer and this is what a standard box end wrench would look like. So, make sure you are using the appropriate one. Once you get it loose enough you can usually pull that off. Now again, we've already drained the fluid out so you can kind of see it, it might be a little dribble there. You do want to prevent getting fluid on there. So, if you've got a napkin you wanna set down there we've drained it so much already that we're good to go. But you may want to put a napkin down first 'cause brake fluid can be pretty corrosive to your paint and, and cause that to bubble and flake off there and stuff. So, I wanna get that out of the way. Now this fitting that's here at the back of our actuator, we actually wanna remove this fitting. So we're gonna pull that fitting off there. We're not gonna be using that fitting anymore because our new Solenoid here, that we're gonna install, is gonna thread directly into it. We are gonna put a little bit of Lock Tight on it before we install it there to help seal it up and ensure it stays in place. This will thread into the back of our actuator. You do want to be careful and make sure that you're threading it in without cross threading it. So, just make sure we're going straight in there. There we go. All right. And that's about as tight as I can get it by hand there. You can see there's still a gap. We're not all the way tight yet. Now there are flat spots on each side that will accept a seven-eights wrench. So you can use those to finish snugging it down. Now again, this is a, it is threading into a plastic actuator or Brake Master Cylinder whichever you wanna call that. But it is all a plastic assembly so you do want to be careful and make sure you're not over tightening it. And, actually, with this particular trailer, you might notice that once you get so far, it can be difficult to get your wrench on it 'cause it's hitting the bottom of the trailer there. So, what I've found works fairly well, if you do run into that, is you can use the nut here on this side but you don't want to use just this nut. This is gonna be a nine-sixteenths in size, but I'm also going to be using a set of Channel Locks over here. I'm just gonna be using both. The Channel Locks will do the majority of the work. But to help prevent my Channel Locks from slipping and giving myself a little bit extra edge, we can use this as well. But we don't want to just use this to tighten it 'cause you can actually over-tighten the mechanism that's inside. And we really only need to turn it far enough to be able to get our wrench back on it again. So, just a little bit of a turn like that, and once our wrench will slide back on there again, we'll finish snugging it down. And I'm not going too crazy tight 'cause again, it is just a plastic housing. With all the throw that I've got of this wrench on there, it doesn't really feel like it's all that tight. But, I don't think I would feel comfortable going any tighter than what we are about there. If I had to guess about the amount of pressure that I'm putting on it I'd say we're probably only putting on maybe like 25 inch-pounds. It's really not all that much. That should be probably pretty good right there. Take our line and reinstall it. Start it by hand. Go as far as you can by hand first, 'cause, again, we don't want to cross-thread anything, especially once you get this far. So we got that in there now. Now you need your wrench to hold this 'cause we don't wanna damage the Solenoid. So hold that and then use your three-eighths wrench to snug it down. And of course your line wrench. And then what sometimes I'll do is with this being a flex hose, I'll turn the flex hose this direction. Kind of twist the flex hose beforehand, so that way when I go to snug it down, it kind of twists the hose back upright. And I'll loosen it just a hair. Twist our hose just a little bit. Snug it down by hand. Then we'll put our wrench on there and snug it down with our three-eighths wrench. There we go. And that's, that's decently snug. We'll put maybe a little bit more on it. and you'll notice that the line, has a nice gentle curve in there. We're not twisting the hose. The pre-twist we did allowed it to bend back up right and go down. Hook up our Lockout Solenoid. They do come pre-stripped but you probably wanna strip back just a little bit more. That'll be a difficult amount to be able to attach to. So one, of course, is gonna go to ground and we've got our ring terminal here that we can reinstall into the location there. And then the other one here, we're gonna clean this up and reattach it back into the trailer there. So we're gonna score and strip these back just a little bit more. Now they're either both yellow because it doesn't matter which one goes where. Just one of them has to go the ground and the other one has to go to the Reverse Lockout Circuit, or that would be the Reverse Light or Backup Circuit from your vehicle. Strip that one back. And we'll strip this one back just a little bit more. All right. So we'll go ahead and hook up our ground first since it's right here. Strip that one back. Wanna take a Heat Shrink Butt Connector, slide it over the end there and crimp it down. And I do recommend a Heat Shrink Butt Connector because we're outside the vehicle. It's on a boat trailer. This is definitely gonna be exposed to moisture so we'll seal up the ends with our heat gun once we've got our connections made. And, based on length, I think I'm gonna use the one that's a little bit higher up on top for the ground one. Just to make sure I got enough length of wire to reach down here to our other circuit. This one's just a little bit closer. And we'll get the electrical tape off here, get this one cleaned up and we'll get our other one attached the same way back to this circuit. With our heat gun, we'll seal those up. We can now go ahead and reinstall our ground wire. We'll push that Wire Loom back on there. Line it back up with the hole. Re-insert it. And then use our fifteen-sixteenths or eight-millimeter to run it back down. Make sure it can't rotate. We got a good ground. And then now we can reinstall the cover onto the back here, covering this stuff up. This does need to be done before you go to fill up the fluid. Because without these four fasteners tightened down, it can pull in air around that gasket that we kind of saw when we had it disassembled. So we'll just line that back up there. Put our fasteners back down in there. Make sure we start 'em by hand. And then go ahead and run 'em on down. And now we just wanna snug these back up 'cause we didn't have 'em all the way fully tightened. Now you don't want to tighten up them very tight 'cause, again, it is just a plastic housing. It threads into a metal nut but you don't want to compress it too far. So just, just stay on the lighter side. If you have an inch-pound torque wrench, you would probably want to use that and keep it fairly low. So this is a drum break set up here and you're gonna find your bleeder screw on the wheel cylinder where you hooked up your line. It should be right next to it. Now if you we're working on a disc brake setup, I've got a sample caliper here to show you, typically something like this. And you'll notice on the disc brake setup, this is where the line would enter and here's the bleeder screws. Now, not all disc brake calipers are gonna have tube bleeder screws. But if they do have tube bleeder screws, you would always want to use the top bleeder screw when bleeding your brakes. And the size of the bleeder screw can vary. It looks like this is probably five-sixteenths for this Kodiak caliper. And over on our drum break here I know that that's gonna be a three-eights in size. So, we're gonna need bleeding drum breaks. But again, it's the procedure's the same it's just the location of the bleeder that you need to really pay attention to. And always use the top one. With drum brakes you shouldn't have multiple. There should just be this one. And when I do this I, I always wanna start at the wheel that is furthest from the actuator. So we're gonna go ahead and start on the passenger-side rear here. That's typically the furthest one but depends on where your actuator's located; if it's in the center, the left, or the right. So we're gonna start on this one though 'cause this is the typical, usually the furthest rear and for us it's gonna be the furthest to the rear. So now we're gonna go ahead and take our little cap off of there. Don't lose your cap. It's nice to have that on there to keep dirt debris and stuff from filling up in here and clogging up your bleeder screw for future maintenance and things like that. So, we're gonna go ahead and loosen this up. Now, we haven't filled it with fluid yet but we're gonna do gravity bleeding first to let, let nature and gravity kind of do most of the work for us here. Minimize how much we have to pump our system. So I'm opening up the bleeder screw. And I went ahead and pulled it open, just a couple of threads there. In most cases, you don't need to open it that far when bleeding, but when doing gravity bleeding, a little bit extra opening helps that flow just kind of work naturally better. So you may also want to take a rubber hose and place that on there and bring it down to your pan because brake fluid can be pretty bad for painted surfaces, wearing off the paint and stuff. So, we're gonna also grab a little hose and have that go down to our drain pan here, just to minimize exposure of brake fluid on our components. All right, we've slid our hose on there to direct it down into either a container or a pan. We do have a container that we kind of just rigged up here. This is a, just an old sports drink bottle. So this works out fairly well for something like this. But again, we got a pan under it here as well just in case the hose does drip a little bit. We're catching it. So now we're gonna head up to our actuator. And we're gonna go ahead and fill it up. And then let nature take its course. And, let gravity do the best it can to start pushing the air from the front, back through our lines, and out, and getting that fluid there. Now even though we are gonna be gravity bleeding it, you are still gonna have to do some pumping. Gravity's not gonna do all the work but it will minimize how much physical labor you have to do. So here we are at the front now. I went ahead and took the cap off of our actuator. If you look at the top here, you'll notice that it tells you what specification of fluid to use. You can use either DOT three or four fluid in this particular setup. We're gonna be using DOT three today. Again, you can use either. You do wanna make sure that you're using brake fluid from a new container 'cause brake fluid is hygroscopic, which means it absorbs moisture. So even an open container that's been sitting for a while can actually draw that moisture out of the air. And the more moisture that is in your brake fluid, the lower the boiling point is in the fluid. And we, and we don't want fluid to boil. We're gonna be careful not to spill the fluid. And go ahead and fill it up. And since we're gonna be bleeding it we're gonna get it pretty close to the top, 'cause we are gonna be losing fluid as it goes through the system and out towards the container that we're, we have at the back. All right, so we've got it filled up there. We're gonna go ahead and let gravity do it, take it's course. So you're probably gonna see some bubbles there as it starts to make it's way through the system. Some of the air is gonna come to the top here. Some of the air is gonna get pushed back through that open bleeder screw we have towards the rear. We went ahead and let it gravity bleed for a while. We ended up not really getting any fluid out the back. Sometimes you do. Sometimes you don't. Sometimes lifting up the front of the trailer to make it the highest point, which it should already be the highest but sometimes lifting up a little higher can help speed up that process and get it started. But in the event that it doesn't, no big deal. You can still pump it manually. So, we've got it all topped up here. After you've got it topped up, it is a good idea to put the cap on. In a lot of cases you don't want the cap on when bleeding. But we we're trying to minimize how much mess we make here. So, keep it from kind of squirting back out of there. Our assistant is gonna push in and we're gonna be at the back and we're gonna open up the bleeder screw. So we're gonna go ahead and head to the back now to the wheel, and we'll communicate with our assistant here to press. And what we want to happen is we want our assistant to press it in. We'll open the bleeder screw, let the fluid come out, or air, whatever we get out of it. We'll close it. Our assistant will then release. And then he will then press in and we'll, we'll just repeat that process over and over. But we never want to have the bleeder screw in the back open when our assistant is releasing 'cause that's gonna draw air back in our bleeder screw. Go ahead and push it in. Our assistant's gonna press. We're gonna open, and there's our fluid coming out. I can see a few air bubbles there. So we're gonna go ahead and close it back up. Okay, you can go ahead and release. Our assistant's now released. So then what we're gonna do is we're gonna now have him press it again and we're gonna open it again, and just keep rinsing and repeat until we get a solid stream of fluid out. Every few presses you may wanna recheck your reservoir and refill the fluid 'cause you don't want it to go empty. If it goes empty up there, it's now drawing in air from the front and we don't want any air in our system. So go ahead and press. There, you can see all that air shootin' outta there. So we're gonna close it. You can go ahead and release. And now that he's released, you can go ahead and press again. And that was a pretty good solid stream we've got there. So we're gonna double check our reservoir. Probably hit this one, one or two more times. Then we're gonna head over to the other side and do that one. And you just rinse and repeat for however many wheels that you have until you get a solid stream out of each one. Once you've got everything bled you can go ahead and reinstall your wheels. If you purchased new drums and hubs from us they do come with new lug nuts for half-inch studs. So you can utilize those as well. We can go ahead now and tighten them down. The new nuts that it comes with is gonna be a 21-millimeter in size. And when tightening 'em down, you wanna do it in a star pattern. This will ensure the wheel draws in evenly. And the tapered side of the nuts should face the wheel with the flat side facing outward. And once you get this back on the ground you'll wanna make sure you torque your lug nuts to the manufacturer's specifications. And that completes our look at Demco's Lockout Solenoid..