etrailer | All About the Demco Hydraulic Brake Actuator-DM72VR

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Full transcript: https://www.etrailer.com/tv-review-de...
Hi there, surge break trailer owners. Today we're gonna be taking a look and showing you how to install Demco's drum brake, easy connect actuator and coupler. These do come in a various different sizes for your ball if you need a bigger or smaller ball. And they also come in various weight ratings. The one we're gonna be showing off today is the two inch ball and 7K weight rated model. This one is designed to work with drum brakes, but we do offer these also for disc brakes.

You do wanna make sure you're purchasing the right one because pressures are different between the two and you wanna make sure that it's appropriate for your type of brakes that you're using. We also offer these in different ball sizes for the coupler. The one that we've got on here today that we're showing off is a two inch 'cause that's what the trailer came with. And so he is using the exact same size to replace it 'cause it's the size ball that our customer had previously, so he wants it to work exactly like it did before. You'll also notice that the actuator and everything kind of stays here on top and our coupler is down here a little bit lower.

So that does help you keep our ball more towards the bottom of the frame instead of being on the top of the frame. The mechanism that you see here on top is for your breakaway, this will hook to the back of your vehicle. You may or may not need to extend it if it doesn't reach, but there should be plenty of length there to reach in most cases 'cause usually your draw bar is not sticking out that far. And this mechanism here, once it pulls, there's a lever here that actually would press inward and we've got the cover off so you can see the mechanism here. And here you can see that when this, if it we're to get pulled, it would push the plunger in and this little piece here on top would keep this mechanism in the pulled position so that way the brakes would stay applied even after you had a disconnect.

And this actuator does come with the easy connect coupler by Demco. What's nice about this is when you drop it down on the ball, you don't even need to open this up, it will automatically open and latch itself automatically right onto the ball. So it's really easy to line this up with the ball and just drop it right down on there. Now when you want to disconnect, you will need to get out and manually lift up on the lever to get it to release from your ball. But connecting it is super easy since you don't have to worry about that.

And one of the things that surprised me with these actuators is how durable they are. The piece here, even though it is a plastic style piece, is actually extremely strong. I've wailed on these with a hammer before just 'cause Demco told me that I couldn't break it and they we're right, I was unable to break it. and nothing, you would think plastic, with this is probably a three pound mallet, or is it two and a half pounds What it says down there. I mean you think that would just destroy it but no, look at that. Not even a mark. And these actuators are gonna be upgradable. This style is what you would typically install on a four pole connector setup, but if you wanted to have a reverse lockout you can actually upgrade it. We sell these kits here at etrailer that gives you an additional plate to cover up the lockout solenoid here and you can, the lockout solenoid also comes with it and you would install that inline in between your actuator and your brake lines and then you could hook up a five-way flat trailer connector to get a reverse signal to this. So that way when you put your vehicle in reverse it locks the brakes out from activating and that's mainly used on these boat trailers here. So that way when you're going to launch your boat into the dock and you're backing down the ramp, your brakes aren't applying as you're trying to back it down in there. So it's a really nice little kit that you can upgrade this with. I do know that if you buy a disc brake version of the actuator you can get it with this pre-installed but with the drum brake version here, you would need to add this additional kit. We'll begin our installation here by first removing your old coupler. There's a couple of different ways your coupler could be installed, it could be a weld on, in which case you would just need to grind the welds to get that off of there. If you're still having difficulty after you've ground the welds down, you can take a chisel on an air hammer and that usually works pretty well to get that to separate off of there after you