Revd Up

Last week I took my boat down to Florida. Everything worked great on the way down until just before I got to my destination. The trailer is a Ameritrail Aluminum trailer with tantem axels. Brakes on one axel. As I applied the brakes they would chatter real bad. Bad enough to bounce off the ground 6inches. Sometimes I could get through it by braking, as the chatter started, let off and brake again , then they would hook up normally. I pulled both drums to inspect. Everything looked great. No Grease, or brake fluid leaks, everything looked fine to the eye. I ended up disabling the surge brakes to get home. Now I need to fix the problem. Anyone have any sugestions on where I need to look?

HighPriority

Looking for hot spots in the drums.

Griff

Sounds like the drums are warped/out of round.

Revd Up

I will check into the drums in the next couple of days. Anything else I should be looking at?

speedreeder

I think you may have some air in the lines and as soon as you hit the brakes the air moves quicker then the fluid. You need to bleed the wheel cylinders and top off the master cylinder.

Griff

Air in the lines wouldn't do that. Air in the lines would compress and cause the brakes not to engage as completely.

You could have a brake line collapsing though. It would expand and let a bunch of fluid into the wheel cylinders and then collapse and not let the fluid back toward the reservoir as braking is decreased. Or it could be an obstruction in one of the lines. Since you don't say anything about pulling, I'm guessing it would be in the common line.

US1 Fountain

iTrader: (1)

My trailer does the exact same thing when stopping when empty. Damn thing feels like it's going to tear the back of the truck off. Truck and trailer both bounce up and down like a mofo leaving trailer tires smoking. Doesn't matter if stopping from highway or traffic creeping speeds.

I've tried bleeding till it bleeds red. rebuilt the new master cyl, new coupler shocks. Nothing worked. Trailer shops are at a loss, along with Eagle. Census is the brakes are to touchy with no load.

My thought is that when you stop, the braking axle tries to roll forward and going thru the equalizer lever, it exerts downward pressure on the other axle, thus lifting the braking axle off the ground enough to where it looses it's traction. At that point, the coupler slides out, axle falls back down, brakes get reapplied and the process starts all over in only fractions of a second. I have disc brakes on all axles.
I had the wife pull the trailer forward at walking speed, then stop while I watched the coupler from the sidewalk. It cycled in and out with every bounce of the trailer.
I'm am installing EOH this very minute because 4 yrs of this chit, I'm tired of it.


Overlooked your condition. I gather it haapens even wiht the boat on your trailer?

cig1988

EOH is the catz a$$! My only regret is not doing it sooner.

Revd Up

Yes mine does it with the boat on the trailer. I haven't had a chance to dig into it yet. Just trying to get as much info as possible. I should start working on it in the next few days.
Thanks for all the tips.

speedreeder

Some of the couplers have a small shock in with the master cylinder, And maybe that has went bad and allows the brakes to be applied too fast.?