lynnmor said:
It is a shame that the great controllers made by Brakesmart and MaxBrake went by the wayside due to higher price and laziness.
Actually, the patent holder (I'm not sure which one) licensed the technology to Ford to incorporate into their OEM trailer brake controller. Dodge later followed suit, I don't know if GM offers a similar option.
In any case, having at least 2 out of the 3 major manufacturers offering the same features in a factory installed package pretty much dried up the market for high end brake controllers.
I had a Brakesmart controller when it first came out, and my dad had one of the old Kelsey Hayes hydraulic controllers that tapped into the brake system for the proportional braking. Having first hand experience with those, along with driving a double trailer semi truck for a summer, I can say there's no comparison between directly controlled proportional braking versus an aftermarket controller that has to sense and interpret the truck's slowing before it applies the trailer brakes.
The aftermarket proportional controllers let you "feel" the trailer brakes engage as they lag the main vehicle brake application by a noticeable amount. You step on the brake pedal, the combo starts to slow, then the trailer brakes kick in. Some controllers try to hide this by pre-loading the braking as soon as the brake light signal comes in, but they're still guessing at how hard to apply the trailer brakes. If the main vehicle skids on some ice or gravel on the road, the trailer brakes also release since the main vehicle isn't supplying as much braking. This happened to me after crossing some railroad tracks before a T intersection, the bouncing of the truck confused the brake controller so it released the trailer brakes, propelling me halfway into the intersection. My fault, of course for not slowing enough in advance but the controller releasing the trailer brakes while I was trying to stop didn't help.
With direct connection, there's no lag. The truck and trailer brakes respond as a single unit, both during gradual and hard braking. You don't "feel" the trailer brakes working, they just do.