My 5'er will be two years old in 13 more days. It has Dexter 7,000 axles with self adjusting brakes and Nev-R-Lube bearings. I have always thought it wasn't braking "right" since new. I could never put my finger on the problem, but it just didn't feel right and I have towed a lot of trailers of all types for a lot of years.
The park I am hosting in was evacuated a few weeks back due to tropical storm Debby and towing in windy conditions with wet roads I really felt the problem, but again didn't know what was wrong. Last week there was a well respected mobile repair guy here in the park and I asked him to take a peek a my brakes. Three of them were fine and the self adjusters were doing their job. The left rear wheel had no adjusting mechanism in it. I don't mean it wasn't working right, I mean the entire adjusting mechanism was not physically in the hub. The shoes and magnet were there and one broken spring, but that is all. This brake has never ever worked.
I had the entire hub replaced with a genuine Dexter hub and sent the invoice to my dealer. They said that Jayco would pay them and they would pay me. I don't have my check yet, but my dealer said there would not be a problem even for the mobile service labor. I had the repair guy put on the invoice that with this brake being inoperative it was safer to perform the repair on my camp site.
One last warranty item before my 3 year extended warranty takes over with the $100.00 deductible.
I do feel better that I knew something was wrong. I don't feel better that I ignored it so long. 25% of my trailer braking was not present and what I did have was 2/3 on one side. I'm just glad I am a very conservative driver and never needed to make a panic stop.
Glad you found the problem before a tree jumped out in front of you. That might have been more excitement than you would like. Happy camping, and a word of caution to us all: if you feel something isn't right, track it down.
I had a brake that was not working due to bad magnet, I bought a new brake control and the instructions told me to warm up the brakes before doing final setting. I drove about 2 miles using the manual brake I warmed up the brakes and when I stopped I check all of the hubs and one was cold. Completed my test drive and checked the magnet with a meter and the magnet was open.
My dealer called me to let me know to expect a phone call from Dexter on 8-14-12. They want a few more details and instructions on where to mail the check. All is looking good so far. I can't image what more detail they want. The adjusting mechanism was not in the hub - period. Not much more detail to tell. I do still have the old parts so maybe they want to give me an account number to return them which I will be happy to do, once I have my check.
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