Ah, I see. I have made peace with this now. I have a 3 bike 1up that is always on the truck. I usually only have 2 bikes, so I can still get in the rear window.
Confirmed solve for Bike rack sensor nonsense
- Thread starter doubleD
- Start date
Yeah, I wouldn't say I've made peace....more like a truce.
I love my 1Up rack and it stays on year round.
If you love your 1up then you haven't tried the new Kuat PistonX!
Just kidding, kind of. My 1up was good but the Kuat is clearly the evolution and massive improvement.
Just kidding, kind of. My 1up was good but the Kuat is clearly the evolution and massive improvement.
Buy a rack that will allow you to lean the rack and bikes.
Here's a video on my Piston X from Kuat.
Toyota can turn the power function off completely (open and close) as well so it will function as a normal lift gate at the point or just power open or close.
In my experience its quite easy if the fob is in your pocket, bend down and it can easy press it. Has happened to me twice now with less than 5000 miles. I don't have a rack but it pretty easy for that to happen.
There are many trailer wiring testers that don’t have trailer brake emulation. It seems the trailer presence detection function is simpler than this “solution” which is designed for testing electric trailer brakes. There are numerous trailers out there that don’t have electric brakes. Probably the LC just checks that some amount of power is used on the lighting circuit(s). I read that some vehicles check that there’s some current used from the 12v pin to the Ground pin.
If that’s what Toyota does, try a large impedance resistor maybe start with 12k ohm. (1 mA) If that doesn’t work, try 6k ohm. (2 mA) You can keep going until you find when the vehicle reliably detects trailer presence. Typical small resistors are 1/8 watt or 1/4 watt rating. 1/4 watt @ 12v is 20 mA. (600 ohm) 1/8 watt @ 12v is 10 mA. (1.2k ohm)
If none of those work, perhaps Toyota is checking each of the individual lighting circuits. If it was me building this fake trailer thingy, I would use a 2k ohm resistor for each of the lighting circuits (to the ground pin) and see if it works. Also put a 2k ohm resistor between the 12v and ground too.
Maybe some trailer wizard will chime in with some street knowledge.
- Moderator
- #28
Having just completed fabrication of my power lift bike rack and trying it out for the first time yesterday, I have come to the conclusion, the 7 pin power and ground wires do not "auto-disable" the anti-back up/brake feature. I am going to try and attach a normal 1157 bulb to the running light wire and see if that turns the feature off. If it works, I'll just put the bulb in a weatherproof alum box and let it shine in the box......LOL.
- Thread starter
- #29
I actually started with this approach. Ask a hundred people and you’ll get a hundred different answers on what type of resistors to use; I used 47ohm 5W but it did literally nothing. I was on all the lights and 12v wires dumping to ground.
I had the option of buying a zillion different resistors and trying via trial and error and endless soldering, but the price could very well have exceeded the cost of just spending $40 (I live in the sticks so either Amazon or snail mail delivery for resistors, =not cheap).
I also tried a set of trailer lights plugged into the 4-pin. That also did nothing.
I suspect the truck is looking for the brake controller, hence why only emulators seem to work vs simple testers.
Interesting. New trailers have LED lights, so the power is really low compared to filament type lamps. It's also interesting that from what you're saying the LC is looking for an electric trailer brake. That's just wrong. The system should detect any trailer hooked up, not just ones using the trailer brake controller.
I have a trailer light tester and a cargo trailer with trailer brakes. I'll do a few tests and report my findings.
