Troubleshooting A Dead Towed Vehicle Battery While Using The Blue Ox Patriot Braking System

Question:

Pulled these fuses and everything in the car went dead and Patriot system showed C message. We have been in this Class A unit for four years and the dealer supposedly installed somsething that would allow us to tow without removing the fuses. THis did not work and every time we towed over a certain amount of hours our car battery would be dead, twice so dead we had to have it towed. We contacted the Patriot company and were told we had to pull theses fuses regardless. We left on another trip yesterday and pulled the fuses....car went dead...C message showed up and so after a lot of checking, rechecking and sweat we took the Patriot system off and drove to our destination. We need an answer....going home we will be going down mountains and are concerned about not having the Patriot system working. Our other alternative would be to not connect the car and drive separately...any help you can give would be appreciated

asked by: Glenda C

Expert Reply:

Fuses being pulled would be a requirement of the vehicle to prevent a specific system from kicking on and either draining the battery or causing damage to the vehicle while it's being towed. The problem you're having is that the Blue Ox Patriot # BLU37TR is powered off of the vehicle battery and over time as it activates it's draining the battery. The solution to this would be to install a charge line kit like the Roadmaster Battery Charge Line Kit for Towed Vehicles # RM-156-25.

This kit is a fused wire that will connect to the towed vehicle's battery and run over to the center pin of the 6-pole socket on your vehicle. If you have a 4-pole connector instead you'll need to cut it off and wire it into the 6-pole socket and use an adapter cable to run between the vehicle and motorhome. You can use part # RM-146-7 to get both of these components, along with a mounting bracket.

From there you can check the motorhome's 7-way to see if a charge line is already installed. Take a multimeter # PT89ZR and place the negative tester post to the 7 o'clock pin on the 7-way and the positive tester post to the 1 o'clock pin on the 7-way to see if you're getting 12 volts. If not then you'd need to run a charge line with part # RM-156-75.

If your motorhome doesn't have a 7-way then you'd also need to install on with part # ETBC7 and then install the charge line. Since the length of a motorhome is going to be much longer than a vehicle you'll also want to pick up some wire # 10-2-1 to get your power wire to the battery and the brake controller wire up to the cab.

Once the charge lines are installed your towed vehicle's battery will charge while you tow so that you never have to worry about it dying while out on the road.