etrailer | Ultimate Overview of the Tekonsha Prodigy P2 Trailer Brake Controller

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Speaker 1: Today, we're gonna be taking a look at Tekonsha Prodigy P2 Proportional Trailer Brake Controller. This works for one, up to four, axles. The part number is 90885. The Tekonsha Prodigy P2 is a really good choice when it comes to brake controllers. It offers proportional braking, which in my opinion is the safest braking that we have available with brake controllers, versus the time delayed systems, which just had a general ramp into which the power we're gonna be applied to the brakes when you hit them. This brakes in relation to the force that you're actually exerting on you pedal.

So if you slam on your brakes very quickly, you're gonna get your braking force very quickly, at a higher amount. If we're just barely tapping the brakes, as we're in stop and go traffic, it's just gonna barely apply the trailer brakes. Basically, with proportional braking, the truck is gonna do it's fair share of the work when needed, the trailer is gonna do it's fair share of the work when needed. So we're not gonna overuse the brakes on the truck, we're not gonna overuse the brakes on our trailer. And it can be especially important in emergencies because we get everything stopped safely.Now to operate the controller is very simple really.

On the side here, there's a roll knob. This controls our gain, or the amount of braking force being sent out to the trailer. You can see here, it's zero, zero. That means we've essentially turned the brake controller completely off. As we start to raise this, generally you hold your manual override over to see it, but we can set it up at really and tenth of a digit, all the way up to 11, is where it maxes out.

At 11, we're getting maximum braking power being sent back to our brakes. If we have it down at about five and a half. That's gonna be about 50% braking power. This we adjust based on our load, terrain, and road conditions. If the roads are wet and slippery, we certainly don't want to have this on high 'cause our trailer wheels are gonna lock up.

Ideally, we'd set this just below the point in which our trailer brakes lock up. That ensures we get maximum braking performance out of our trailer when we need it.The manual override lever here on the bottom, generally is used to either test the setting of your controller, or in an emergency sleigh situation. This allows us to apply the brakes on our trailer, up to whatever our preset is with our gain, so we don't have to worry about overpowering it if we've got it set at 2.6, 2.7, that's basically where it's gonna end. Let's just kind of show you, 2.3 let's say. All the way over, it's gonna be at 2.3, so we're not gonna lock them up, but by just applying the brakes on the trailer, and not the truck, most of the times you're gonna eliminate that sway.There's a single LED dot here, just after the first number. That's gonna indicate to you that you have 12 volt power coming to your brake controller. There's a second one on the other side, right behind P in P2, and that's for a boost mode, which is operated with the button here. Now boost mode is gonna change the quickness and aggressiveness in which our brakes are applied. So if we're a light trailer behind a vehicle, we really don't need any booster, maybe just go to boost level one. But, as that trailer gets heavier and heavier, or as the hills get steeper up and down, we want to increase that boost level to get a quicker more aggressive braking process. Do that just by tapping the button here. Currently, no boost is on, so we hit the button, it's a B, with no number and no LED. We hit it twice, you can see we go to B1, B2, B3. Once again, we can go to boost nothing, which means no boost on, so very quick and easy to adjust that. It really helps you to fine-tune your braking. Once we have our gain set, which is the maximum power, we can set the feel for how quickly and aggressively we want those to come on.When we compare this to other proportional brake controllers, let's say the P3. It's gotta be one of the most popular one's on the market. They're made by the same company. They have a lot of the same technologies. With the P3, you do have more options in mounting. That's just about any direction you want to mount it, as long as it's in direction with you vehicles line of travel. With the P3, I really think you get more diagnostic functions, and more customization. You're not really gonna upgrade the braking performance by going with the P3, it's just gonna be more interactive. You're gonna get more information from it, you'll be able to change the colors of it, different things like that. If that's something that's impo