Why did/ why will your brakes suddenly fail on one side! LIFESAFETY ISSUE.

Maxcamp

We nearly went off a cliff at 11,000 feet when this happened to us on our inaugural cross country trip.
Braking suddenly became one-sided causing out of control steering.

Everyone should check for excess 12v cable slack leading to their Dexter brakes at the wheel immediately.
Nucamp has known for years of occasional issues with too much slack wire, leading to the wire rubbing on tire, failing, and brake failure.
At least nine forum members have commented on a similar wire failure.


This is the failed wire which rubbed on tyre after 2,000 miles. 
Perhaps bumps or cold temp shrinkage shifted Nucamp's single zip tie.  Pic after cutting to field splice at 29 degrees at 11,000 feet.  GRRR.


The black zip ties holding the red brake wires to the axle are the only means of controlling cable slack.  A loose tie could spell disaster for you!

Nucamp also wired the driver side brake from the 12v frame mounted junction box, and then spliced from the driver side to passenger side brake along the axle.  The passenger side wiring therefore has more impedence.  Adding a field splice additionally led to weaker passenger braking no matter what we tried.
THREE RV firms on the road were unable to correct this issue.

We ultimately had to jack the trailer at home, drop the scrim, and fully re-wire and rebuild the braking systems due to incompatible wear and braking leverages.
We wired two separate and measured equal homeruns from each brake to the junction box, twisted and soldered all connections in lieu of crappy crimps, and tested everything to perfection.

Still using zip ties, but... many both on axle and on hub pivot arm.



This very weak clear plastic snap is the only thing Nucamp used in the wheelwell to control cable slack.  It can fail just from brushing tall grass.
Extra zip ties are needed to hold wire harness to the pivoting control arm to right in pic.  Be sure pivoting will not pull on wire connections.


NuCamp connections on this lifesafety brake- poor.


Twisted, soldered, and heat shrunk connections- better.



During rebuild, prior to final zip ties at hub pivot arm behind tyre.

Illini83

Thanks Maxcamp. I'm a brand new TAB 400 owner and I was under it today and I noticed there was a single zip tie holding the brake wire in place. I also thought that seemed inadequate.

manyman297

Happened to ours a few years ago. 

Documented here:
https://tab-rv.vanillacommunity.com/discussion/13863/frayed-brake-wire-on-2021-400-bd#latest

Wild that they still aren’t correcting this issue. Talk about a serious liability. I was pretty enraged when I discovered the issue. Nucamp responded with concern but the fact that they still aren’t taking steps to ensure this doesn’t keep happening is worrying. It’s not a hard thing to fix…it’s just getting them to actually do it is where the problem is. 

@Maxcamp Did this happen to you twice? I see that it happened to you back in February of 2022 in my linked thread.