tandem axle trailer

The nicest thing about surge brakes is they adjust themselves to the load, and fit onto any vehicle. A heavy load on the trailer will start to push forward on the hitch pretty hard when stopping your truck. So the master cylinder gets pushed hard, which applies the brakes hard. When it is all working, it works quite nicely. I personally tend to like them for mutt work. Where I"m using a trailer for all sorts of things, behind all sorts of tow vehicles.

Surge brakes tend to make backing up a pain, as you have to get out and lock out the brakes. Otherwise, when you push backwards on the trailer tongue you lock up the trailer brakes.

Also, surge brakes don"t do anything when sitting still. So if you"re sitting on a steep grade, only your tow vehicle is holding.

Electric brakes are electrical. They use an electro-magnet to pull the brake shoes against the drum, or the pads against the rotor. They are actuated by an electronic controller in the tow vehicle. This controller sends various amounts of electricity to the electro-maget, to apply various amounts of braking force.

The controller is tied to your tow vehicles brake lines, and senses the hydraulic pressure. The more hydraulic pressure it senses, the stronger electrical signal it sends to the trailer brakes.

Electronic brakes require you to manually adjust the signal, roughly akin to adjusting the volume on a radio. If you"ve got a heavy load on the trailer, you want a lot of braking force. If you"ve got a light load, you want little braking force on the trailer.

Electric brakes require a dedicated tow vehicle. They only work when hooked up to a vehicle with an electronic brake controller.

You can apply the brakes on an electic brake trailer by pushing a bar or lever or button on the actuator. This is darn nice at times. When sitting on a steep hill, the brakes are kept on on the trailer. This can be nice at times, especially when trying to take off with a manual transmission.

Tires

Trailer tires are almost universally bias ply, with extremely stiff sidewalls. This keeps the trailer from wiggling and swaying.

Car tires are almost universally radial, with soft sidewalls. They make lousy trailer tires due to the side to side flexing they allow. You can compensate for this by increasing tire pressure, but then you get a bouncing trailer.

Truck or SUV tires can work, as they can have stiff sidewalls. I happen to have a set of 6 ply truck tires on my heavy trailer, and they work just as well as a trailer tire. But by not means are truck or SUV tires inherently stiff sidewalled. You must check them yourself.

The heavier the load on the trailer, the more important stiff sidewalls becomes.

The E range tires on my Dodge Ram 3500, which BTW are radials, have sidewalls that are plenty stiff.

As far as his comment on tires he said predominantly not always. From what I've seen he's right.

[electric brakes are RIGHT NOW stopping ,, surge brakes work on the principal of when you apply the brakes ,, your truck will dip and that triggers the brakes to work according to the force pushing down on the tonuge}}

I am happy to hear of someone finally interested in keeping the public safe when hauling a trailer with a tractor on it,,

You can replace the whole brake system on each wheel, as a kit not very expensive you take the old backing plate off and put the whole replacement backing plate on that is loaded , has the brakes magnets the whole nine yards,,

the electric brakes will give you a lot more control and stopping power,,,,

as far as the tires,, you can use suv tires as long as they are the correct size and NOT passenger tires,, they should have a highner ply rating on them , I prefer class E,, they are heavy duty enough,, if you are replacing though with new,, the price is not that much different, may even be cheaper to just put on the trailer tires,,,

if you dont have a electric controller in your truck yet do yourself a favor and get the better digital reading type you will be able to tell how much pressure is going to the brakes at a glance,,,

hope this helps,, post back if you have any questions,, there are lots of knowledge here,,,

safety should be your main concern and it sounds like it is,,, next is chaining the tractor down correctly,, but that will be covered in the next lesson hahahahaha,,good luck pat

I`m also a big fan of electric brakes on a small trailer that isn`t going to be submerged, surge brakes are a compromised convenience item for boat trailers who`s operators are too lazy or forgetful to get out and unplug before going underwater, even the really heavy boat trailers have electrics.

It might be merely coincidence but all of my trailers have Goodyear trailer tires and I haven`t had any problems. If you are going to be carrying any weight at all I would recommend a trailer duty tire but I do know many people use a good truck tire with no trouble.

I`m sure that all manner of trailers have been outfitted with surge brakes, including a pop up camper I once owned. I only cited the boat trailer application because it is almost universal on trailers which carry boats under about 10K# from what I`ve seen. I just can`t explain the logic of using surge brakes on any other type of trailer, false security comes to mind.

Go with electric. They are not all on or all off as some say. You can adjust your controller to any pressure you want. I hauled my loader to a jobsite today so I had it on near full. On the way home with the trailer empty it was set at nearly off.

Hook up a breakaway switch as required and install a battery with the small charger in the box and you are good to go.