Tow Command Retro

Charles · Jun 16, 2015

What's the deal on putting an 05+ Integrated Trailer Brake Controller in anything else?

Don't care about bells and whistles.... don't care about the instrument cluster, blah, blah, blah....

Will it read in a sensor signal I gather from the master cylinder and take in a power and ground and output a modulated voltage based on that signal input or does it need to talk to some bs under the dash to work?

I want brake pressure controlled trailer brakes and the ford unit does that. Anybody already been down this road?

co04cobra · Jun 16, 2015

I chased it for a while. I had it "working" but I could only get it to put out 6v max gain.

I had to do that by crossing the ref. wires and powering it kind of like a standard brake box.

sootie · Jun 17, 2015

why is this in awol? wouldn't it get better attention in the 7.3 forum?

Charles · Jun 17, 2015

I'm kind of surprised this isn't more of a common thing already figured out...

There's a controller called a MaxBrake, but it kind of looks like sh*t IMO, and the Ford unit is actually cheaper and a truck 3 years newer than mine would have come with it.

Is there any way to see how many wires go into the Ford TBC and what they want out of life? Is something like that on like Alldata or anything? If it needs some kind of a digital input to sooth it and tell it everything's gonna be okay that might not be too hard to do depending on how complicated it would be.

When you were getting 6v out of it, were you feeding it a reference signal from a pressure transducer somewhere and dicking with other wires, or were you just trying to feed it a 5v reference to see if it would jump to full output?

How many wires are there?

If this needs to be somewhere else, move it....

I didn't know where to put it, seeing as it would apply to every model truck ever produced.

JD3020 · Jun 17, 2015

Following this, really want it in my f450. Currently have one of the old school time delay controllers, nothing but an annoying PITA. The inertia controllers are better, but they work off the assumption that the truck brakes are working good.

Arisley · Jun 17, 2015

Moved to (hopefully) the right place.

co04cobra · Jun 17, 2015

Charles said:
I'm kind of surprised this isn't more of a common thing already figured out...

There's a controller called a MaxBrake, but it kind of looks like sh*t IMO, and the Ford unit is actually cheaper and a truck 3 years newer than mine would have come with it.

Is there any way to see how many wires go into the Ford TBC and what they want out of life? Is something like that on like Alldata or anything? If it needs some kind of a digital input to sooth it and tell it everything's gonna be okay that might not be too hard to do depending on how complicated it would be.

When you were getting 6v out of it, were you feeding it a reference signal from a pressure transducer somewhere and dicking with other wires, or were you just trying to feed it a 5v reference to see if it would jump to full output?

How many wires are there?

If this needs to be somewhere else, move it....

I didn't know where to put it, seeing as it would apply to every model truck ever produced.

I was not sending it signal in a pressure form but I think that is one of the other thing it wants to see.

I have some notes wrote down some where on it. I had the schematic pulled up at the time, and iirc, it has 2 wires comm. to the pcm and I think the ABS, on top of several others for dumb chit...

There were 2 plugs on the back. "Normal" brake controller side with 4 wires, which I wired that pigtail into to the factory plug for the older truck and the second plug had 10 pins on the back of the controller.

I couldn't find my pigtail but I don't remember having quite that many actual wires on the pigtail.

Dave · Jun 17, 2015

Charles it will work like any normal brake controller by wiring it up using the 4 wires on the left side. However for the proportional controlling to work it needs to see a pressure signal off the master cylinder and a speed signal from the cluster IIRC. Lemme see if I can find the wiring diagram I had on my old laptop again

AllGo'N'Show · Jun 17, 2015

My 08 XL won't retrofit in and fire up properly, dealer says I have the wrong controller even though I have tried two from 08's themselves. So I have an 08 Chassis, with Master Cyl. swapped, with a TBC that has the LCD read out, if you guys need something checked on mine let me know, maybe I will eventually figure out why it won't work.

Module just fires up, shows all light up green for a sec, goes red then powers down and throws fault on dash.

Still on the hunt for the unicorn the dealer wants and says will work... 08 without LCD on the slider but all I've found is an 09+ module that I'm told won't work with 08 anyways... w t f

Charles · Jun 17, 2015

I might break open one of the little pos timer-based controllers and see if I'm lucky enough that the manual slider might just send a reference voltage to a transistor...

If so, it would be as simple as a pressure transducer on the master cylinder with a trimmer pot (probably use the one on the little pos controller) for setting sensitivity.

Wouldn't that be cheap, lol.

Sounds like the ford unit might need too much coddling for my taste.

njjeep · Jun 18, 2015

What about taking an aftermarket controller and making it look better? Possibly mounting it in a stock ford controller?

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ghohouston · Jun 18, 2015

njjeep said:
What about taking an aftermarket controller and making it look better? Possibly mounting it in a stock ford controller?

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You're missing the point.