Ford Brake controller Message!!!!

[JH Sechelt]

For those of us out there pulling our monties with 2005 Ford trucks with the intergrated brake controller.

Like others, I kept getting warnings on the message board in the center of my dashboard telling me my trailer has become unplugged. that in itself was bad enough but that constant beep that came with each warning was enough to drive you nuts.

Now thanks to this MOC Forums I found the problem. It is not easy just to pop over to our dealer (100 miles away plus a ferry to catch ), it costs too much to go there with every little thing that's wrong, so I try to fix as much as I can on my own.

I had checked all conections, ( juction box under the pin box and all the conections to the brake drums, and could not find any problem.
I was sure my truck was OK as we have pulled our last trailer all over the west coast and never had a problem.

...........anyways after reading as much as I could find on this forum I decided it must be inside one of the brake drums. Now which one?
It seems that most of the problems were found in the right rear drum, so why not. I took the tire and then the drum off and there it was, right there.

The Magenet has two wires going to it and one of them was rubbed right thru to the copper wire. The wires have two little clips that hold them to the actuator Arm, and one had come loose or was never clipped on. The rubbed part of the wire was about 1 & 1/2 " in front of the magnet. It was rubbing on the face of the brake drum right where the wheel studs go thru the drum. Not a hard fix, a little Electrian's tape, Hook up the wire clip properly, make sure nothing is going to rub and put the drum and `wheel back together. Took it out for a 15 mile ride a little while ago and not a peep.

thanks to everyone who takes the time to post on this forum. It can be very educational when we all work together, like we do on Montanaowners.com


John & Dawn