Thread: 3.5t trailer brake recommendations

Originally Posted by No.3

Yeah, if you piece together a setup you can do it for a lot less basically welding up your own axles etc but the thing with that gear as a kit is it all turns up ready to go (as long as it fits your trailer).

If you a willing to shop about and haunt Trademe and Marketplace you can pick up used gear and rebuild it and come out well under that, but its a lot more hassle...

I converted a tandem to braked 2500Kg for a mate a while back, and all up not including my time it was less than $500 including the calipers, discs, coupling, connection kit, and a couple of bits I had to modify and fab up. WoF guys had no idea it was never braked, so I guess I did my job right.

I managed to get good second hand coupling and caliper sets (about 6 sets of calipers in a bulk deal and sold off everything that we didn't need which reduced the costs a lot). Got a hydraulic piping kit off Trademe for under a hundy, had a set of disc hubs ex a boat that were rusty as F that just needed the discs skimmed (which was actually a bastard of a job in my lathe) and the rest was my time. Improved the towing manners of the trailer no end, when it was unbraked it surged and shoved the towing vehicle all over the road and after fitting it with brakes it became a kitten. Solved all of the surging and shoving, as every time it leaned on the tow vehicle it lightly applied it's own brakes and settled back to where it should be.

Incidentally, the TB-class gear doesn't do that, it will still surge and shove given half a chance and that's part of the reason why most people go for the full electronic in cab controllers as you have a button to hit to manually apply the brakes on the trailer independent of the towing vehicle's brakes so if the trailer gets squiffy you can give it a quick tap to settle it back into line.

Putting my own kit together would be cheaper and I might do that anyway, would be easier if it was going to be 2.5t not 3.5t.