You might be interested to know that your F-150 truck may come with an electronic trailer brake controller, or TBC – that can help make slowing down with your trailer smooth and effective.
The trailer brake controller automatically applies the trailer brakes when the tow vehicles brakes are pressed. The TBC control is located on your center console.
It has a manual control lever that sends independent power to the trailer’s brakes, and a plus and minus button. Pressing either of them adjusts how much or how little power the TBC sends to your trailer’s brakes.
If you press and hold the button, you can raise or lower the gain setting continuously.
How to access Trailer Brake Controller information
In order to see what the TBC is telling you, you’ll want to have the trailer screen up on your LCD productivity screen (instrument cluster).
- To get there, go to Truck Apps, then push the right arrow twice until you see the trailer display.
- Unless a trailer is connected, the display will read, Trailer Disconnected.
- As soon as a trailer is connected, you’ll see Trailer Connected message. Press OK.
- Once the trailer connected message goes away, you’ll see Gain setting.
- This is what we talked about earlier, and a bar graph that lights up to show you the amount of power going to the trailer brakes.
- From the trailer display, press OK, and choose the Connection Checklist option. It corresponds to different trailer types and walks you through the connection process to remind you of the necessary steps.
