Performance Unlimited

The new Ford Super Duty's trigger the alarm if the trailer plug is disconnected and sends an alert to your phone. Very nice feature unless it triggers several times for no reason. Looking closely reveals the problem which consists of several issues. First, the lug on the trailer plug that is held in by the tab on the flip top cap is worn and angled which pushes the cap and tab away and allows the plug to walk out of the outlet socket reducing connectivity. Secondly the copper terminals in the plug are pushed apart by usage which reduces the clamping force on the terminals in the outlet socket. The first solution was to squeeze the terminals in the trailer plug together with a needle nose pliers to increase the contact to the outlet socket. The second solution was to slit an inward angle into the lug on the plug to remove some of the rubber material and then screw in a custom made 1/8" thick aluminum spacer on the back of the lug which eliminates the worn surface on the lug as well as the inward angle increases the pull into the outlet socket rather than pushing it away. The increased thickness also forces the plug deeper into the outlet socket increasing connectivity and reliability even more. Many of the aftermarket replacement repair plugs only have a single terminal in each port rather than two as in this one, so it was well worth the effort to fix and improve this one. This will work far better than even a new one.

If you have a CURT #52025 charger for maintaining your trailer's Breakaway battery, you want to check that it actually works. Very few people bother and their emergency breakaway battery slowly depletes it's power without you realizing it until it's too late. To test if it is working, place a volt meter on the breakaway battery and read the voltage, then start the tow vehicle (with the trailer's harness plugged in of course) and the voltage should increase. After obtaining three of these CURT 52025 chargers, one 10 months ago, one several weeks ago and another just recently, all three do not charge at all. While they do show voltage (.3 less than the inpit voltage) when NOT connected to the trailer's battery, once it is connected, then there is no charge from the charger, and no draw being pulled by the charger when connected. In other words it is not consuming any amperage from the source nor sending any amperage to the battery at all. It does nothing. All three of them including one sent directly to me from CURT. Since all these chargers came from over a 10 month period, one might suspect all of them made in that time frame might not work? I obtained another similar charger, a HOPKINS 20007 and it works perfectly! The circuit resistance measured on the Hopkins is only 18k ohms, where the same resistance on the CURT is huge 4.3 Meg ohms. I carefully dissected the CURT charger and and applied 13.6 volts directly to wire N1 inside with no results, then bypassed the diode and applied to N2 also with no results, then I applied it to N3 with no results. Finally I applied 13.6 volts to the "Y" wire which bypassed the diode and resistor and finally there was charge going to the trailer battery. But of course that bypasses ALL of the internal circuitry to get it to work, which means it does not work at all. The Hopkins 20007 works perfectly, and significantly smaller as well, now that you can see what in inside.