Valley Odyssey Proportional Brake Controller Review - etrailer.com

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Today we are going to show you part number 52801 from Valley. This is their Odyssey electronic brake controller. This is a proportional brake controller which means it works with the enuresis within your vehicle. For instance when you hit your brakes there is something in the brake controller that moves forward. As it moves forward it sends out how much current is needed to apply to the trailer brakes. When you left off the brake it lets off the brake at the same time. So your braking will be the same between your truck and trailer. What you get with the kit is obviously the brake controller itself, a mounting bracket, and an adhesive square to attach the brake controller to the dash or the bracket. Also it comes with assembly screws and even directions on how to install the brake controller.

One thing that it does not come with is a little pig tail that plugs into here. These are sold separately and will have a universal adapter that will plug into there. The 4 wires coming out of the pig tail here unless you have a tow package. There is a cable made that will plug into here and run underneath your dash to the tow port. At this point we will give you a demonstration on how this works. As you can see when you first apply power to the brake controller is CL. Which means it needs to be calibrated. So basically what that means when it is installed in the vehicle whatever angle you have it set at it has to calibrate for that angle. All you have to do is hit the button right here and hold it down until it stops flashing or until is steadily stays on. Then you can go ahead and let go of the button and it is now calibrated at the current position it is now setting at.

The next one is about the boost button here. We have 4 levels of the boost function. L1,L2,L3 and L4. If you go back to L1 that is basically no power going out to the brake controller or going to the trailer as soon as you hit the brakes. When it is on it just sends power to the trailer brakes judged by the enuresis sensor. If you set it too L2 it applies only 18 of the power set on the brake controller. That way you get your trailer brakes working a little faster then your truck brakes are. So if some of you like to feel the trailer brakes working before the truck then this is the way to go. When you move it up to L3 it moves 21 higher then the first L1 setting. It basically puts out a little more power. When you go to L4 it approximately 15 more then L3. For your maximum initial power output. For instance levels 2 through 4 it will start off applying whatever power you and instantly come on. Then after a few seconds later it will revert back to the initial brake controller settings. So it will start letting off power but only to where you have your foot brake at. It matches the acceleration via the internal sensor. Now this thumb wheel on the side here controls the total amount of current that is available to use on your trailer. We will just activate it with the manual override. With that you can control the amount of gains coming out. All the way forward is full power and all the way to the rear of your vehicle is about a half a volt. Again this is the gain this is where you control the power that the brake controller will need. So basically if you have it back up to 7 right there and you apply the trailer brakes and they start to lock up then you want to go back down a little bit one number at a time or half until you have no wheel lock up. If you do not have enough just go up 1 or 1 and a half to get the right feel that you want. Underneath here is the manual override we talked about a second ago. You can just use your thumb and it slides right over. That will activate the trailer brakes themselves up to the power you have preset. It also activates the brake lights on the vehicle.

Now getting back to the mounting of the brake controller. What is nice about this one is get a full 180 degrees of range. So basically if you put it at an direction and it will work just fine. Just to recap the brake controller it is pretty easy. There is a little movement on the inside that senses how hard you are hitting the brakes. So it sends the current out to match the trailer so if are only putting halfway brake on your vehicle the brake controller Odyssey will copy that. Meaning the brakes on your trailer will match your brakes on the truck. Between the boosts there is a certain amount being applied instantaneously. Then you activate your trailer brakes and a second or 2 later it will ramp back down and the brake controller will match the power on your truck brakes. There you have it for part number 52801 from Valley. The Odyssey electronic brake controller.

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