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Walnut Grove MN USA | my trusty Dodge popped the input shaft on the tranny today pulling the gooseneck sprayer tender. Since it will be down for a while I am considering trying to pull the tender with a semi tractor. I know I will need a brake controller. Where/what can I do to connect the trailer to the semi? Ball coupler can be easily dropped out of the trailer. Is it as simple as dropping that out and welding a kingpin to a pipe and sliding that in? |
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west central Iowa | I think its been talked about on here before, you can either do what you said or buy a pipe with a kingpin already on it or mount a ball behind the fifth wheel on your semi. |
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| Any decent stock trailer, goosneck, sled trailer joint, will have an insert with a kingpin already on it to slide into the hole your ball coupler came out of. Not worth the aggravation of building one for what they cost. Tow all my pickup trailers with a tandem Peterbilt, when the little darlings need fuel pumps, trannies, etc. |
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| Why do you need a brake controller, light hook up yes but brakes, don't know about you but I don't use the brakes on the semi much at all maybe to stop completly but that is about it or don't you have a jake on the truck then i suppose you would use them more. Dennis SEND |
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Ogema, MN | Yes you do need the controller you would think the semi has enough brakes but between no weight on the drivers and the proportioning valve you almost can't stop at all. |
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Downtown Shell Knob MO Come Visit! | I have no problem stopping, I can usually do it within 20 feet with said setup. My problem is leaving 20' black-marks every time I try to stop. If you only need it until your pickup is fixed I probably would just use it without trailer brakes. Im sure you couldn't have had too many gallon on the trailer if you were only using a pickup before. |
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| I'm sure you would make the DOT quite happy if they stopped you & found there were no brakes on the gn. |
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Alliance, NE | We set up our tandem truck to pull a gooseneck. We installed a brake controller and a ball. The ball is mounted between the frame rails behind the 5thwheel. We wanted to just install a kingpin on gn but clearence was an issue when turning. The ball was the answer to our problem. Maybe if u have a single axle truck you won't have the problem of hitting the trailer when turning? |
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| jirod - 6/24/2011 22:23 you would think the semi has enough brakes but between no weight on the drivers and the proportioning valve you almost can't stop at all. My exp says otherwise. |
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Brazilton KS | My experience is consistant with jirod. Plus there is the little problem with passing DOT, not to mention being safe in the event something happens and you need to stop to prevent an accident. |
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east of indianapolis | Used to work at a place that sold trailers and such. We installed a few controllers in semis and seems like guys in shop used too complain about it.As memory serves me you need to get a controller that works off of time, then find the wire on truck that controlls the brake lights and wire the controller in signal to that. Hope I helped a little ,but probably didn't do a good job of explaining. |
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| We have settup two semi tractors to pull gns. On both we had to install a wiring converter to get the lights on the gn to work correctly. I've been told that on some semis you don't have to hav the convertor but on our F-liners we had to. |
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| All the newer brake controllers are completely electric, no connection to the hydraulic brakes like they used to. Very easy to install. I would suggest putting in a dedicated socket for the gooseneck, as you will need a wire from the brake controller to apply the electric brakes, but not for use with a semi trailer. Also avoids the need for different plugs on the trailer. Semi trailers have separate circuits for turn signals and brake lights. If the semi is wired to use the turn signals as brake light (some are), then the options are to change it over (new turn signal stalk and some wiring), or use a converter to do same. Either way should be under $100 in parts.
Mounting a ball below and behind the fifth wheel is the best choice as it means no changes on the gooseneck, and also allows lateral movement between the truck and trailer. Keep an eye on the trailer hitch in the rear view mirror, lots of movement from side to side. On a single axle the ball can be placed where it should, just forward of the rear axle and the fifth wheel slid forward. On a tandem, one has to be more aware of the clearance needed to turn. In most cases, a 2 1/2" deep C channel (think frame rail material), with the C facing down, placed on the bottom of the truck frame rail flange will put the ball at about the correct height to match pick-up. With the open portion of the C turned down, it allows clearance for the axle pig.
Do be careful with the addition power and what it can do to the trailer neck, especially when at sharper angles. |
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Brazilton KS | Freightliners still have a turn/brake light circuit which would run the gooseneck plug just fine. It's what runs the lights on the back of the truck frame. There's no need to add any converter, just have to hook it up right. |
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| I know the DOT problem. I just think the truck stops it much better without the trailer brakes than the pickup does with trailer brakes. I'd never recommend anyone to run without trailer brakes though. I'd wonder what % of gooseneck trailers with electric brakes have functional brakes anyway. |
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Brazilton KS | We pulled our big stock trailer with the semi tractor once. I expected it to just be the cat's meow. I was surprised at the complaint that it wouldn't stop. I drove it the last load. I had to think about it a little after driving it, because sure enough, it wouldn't stop worth a darn. Thinking about it made it clear...I had roughly 4ok gross, with 20k of it on the trailer axles. The tractor had 10k on the steering axle. That left 10k on the drive axles. The trailer brakes were not functioning. The steer axle had brakes for 12k. The drive axles had brakes for 34k. For some reason they quit putting bobtail valves on the steer axle of trucks. There was no way to make the brakes even remotely close to being balanced...it would slide the drivers without slowing down much. The next time we hauled, we put trailer on 1 ton with functioning brake control. It grosses around 35k this way. It without doubt will stop much shorter then the semi would. I would bet it will even stop shorter without the trailer brakes. That's my experience. If the trailer was set up to put weight on the tractor, it would make a big difference, but a gooseneck is set up to go on a truck with no more then 10k rear axle capacity. |
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Ogema, MN | That's exactly the same experience we had last spring so this year we put a brake controller on. |
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| If you want to get around the porportioning valve, plug off the gladhands and run with the red knob pushed in. And use a light foot. |
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Brazilton KS | how does that help? |
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| I'd appreciate it if you posted wiring diagrahm of how it's done? The convertoer on ours has gone bad |
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Southwest Missouri | On my 89 Freightliner, the factory lights for the rear have the stop and turn combined. For our gooseneck plug, we just tapped into those wires. Yours may be different. |
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Brazilton KS | It's that way in '94, too. I don't have a diagram or know the colors, but you can get the wires at the turn signal controller, or at the back of the frame. It wasn't that hard ti figure out with a test light. I changed the wiring at that turn signal control, and made the trailer turn signal wires turn/stop signals instead....that makes all the lights on the back of the semi trailer come on as brake lights instead of the turn lights staying dark. If you don't want to do that, you could run the gooseneck wire harnesss seperate from the big trailer harness. |
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| Your proportioning valve is controlled by the air pressure in the trailer supply line. Thats how it knows wether there is a trailer attached or not, and wether it needs to proportion the brakes. I know of a few guys that have converted tractors to bobtail monure or silage trucks and wear out the front brakes within the first 20,000 niles because they ran with the red supply button out and the proportion valves though it was a bobtail. Push the red button in, now it gives full pressure to all axles, and all is right in the world agian.
Here is nice write up about proportioning valves from Bendix.
http://www.bendixvrc.com/itemDisplay.asp?documentID=2400
Edited by silagehauler 6/26/2011 00:27
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Brazilton KS | Isn't that going to increase rear braking pressure and make it worse? |
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| Maybe. Thats why I said use a light foot. You will get more pressure to rear axles sooner. In the link it talks about cutting rear axle pressure, for a 75% front and 25% rear application, but that ratio diminishes with more application pressure. So with a heavy gooseneck trailer, it might be advantageous to have normal breaking action.
We use to run a '72 GM Astro for our farm truck. It didn't even have brakes on the steer axle. I doubt it even had a proportioning valve. It stopped just fine. We even pulled a livestock trailer with it some, not a big one, but it still stopped just fine. And the trailer didn't have any brakes either. That is kind of what makes me think that normal braking action would be better in said situation. |
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| Maybe our hitch location is what makes it work better for us. The truck is a single axle and the ball is about 16" behind the axle. Probably transfers a decent amount of weight off of the front and onto the rear. Ball behind the rear axle makes it really nice for backing also. |
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Brazilton KS | Single axle would be much less out of balance. Moving the ball to the extreme rear would also make it much less out of balance. We had ours just behind the 5th wheel plate, which put it just over the rear driver of the tandem. |
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Brazilton KS | It is going to cut rear pressure when the tractor protector is OUT, not when it is in. The gooseneck had little tongue weight so it needs the tractor to be in bobtail mode, not in semi tractor mode. |
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| Yes, I am quite aware of that. But it also seems like when in bobtail, the rear axle don't get hardly any pressure..little bit more pedal...little bit more pressure..little bit more pedal...little bit more pressure...little bit more pedal...BAM, a lot more pressure. I sometimes wonder if just having normal, smooth braking action with good anti-lock wouldn't be better. Hence the theory of bypassing the proportion valve. And it's just that, a theory.But I would like to try it sometime. |
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Brazilton KS | Anti lock would make it a completely different deal, if it actually works. No experience there. The problem we have is getting enough brake actuation on the steer axle to actually slow down without locking the drivers. |
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gooseneck to semi
