2010-04-08: Too Big to Fail...

Today we drove from St. Louis north toward Chicago. The plan was to stop in a State Park somewhere between the two cities. But just about a third of the way, while stopping in a rest area, I noticed that the emergency breakaway switch box had the pin out...again! This was the second time this happened.



The first time I discovered the problem quick enough, so there was no damage to the breaks. This second time we were not so lucky. The magnets in the trailer electrical brakes overheated exposing the internal coils and creating an electrical short in the break system. The trailer was still breaking, but clearly we needed at least a new breakaway box and a break check. With our trusty Verizon 3G modem, we browsed RV shops in the area, and we found one in Decatur, IL. We drove about 50 miles out of our route to fix this issue. The folks at Jerry Presley RV inspected the trailer and truck break systems. The truck was OK. The trailer needed a new breakaway box and 4 new magnets, as 2 were badly burned and just to be on the safe side, lets do'em all. The shop was able to get us on the road the same day! Which was great, but the bill was steep.
We tentatively blamed the problem on a relatively short tripping cable to the breakaway box, combined with sharp turns while backing up or turning.

Now, all this brought to my attention the issue of pairing a given trailer with the right Tow Vehicle (TV). As it turns out, the braking capacity of the TV is just as important as the towing capacity. The Sierra 2500HD proved to have plenty of breaking power when needed, even with weakened trailer breaks. The TV needs to show the trailer who's boss.....is my wife reading over my shoulder? Don't want to risk any overreaching interpretations.

By the way, my brother gave us the book “Too Big to Fail.” Great book, we have been reading it during long hauls, and at night. If any free-marketeer-head still has any delusions in a vacuum of let markets “decide” what's best, this should be a good read.

After the trailer got fixed, we barely made it to the nearest State Park, Weldon Springs and camped for the night.