Demco SBS Air Force One Second Vehicle Kit Installation - 2015 Ram 1500

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Demco SBS Second Vehicle Kit for Air Force One Supplemental Braking System

124 reviews

Code: SM99209

Retail: $1,136.00

Price:  $949.00

• Accessories and Parts
• Tow Bar Braking Systems
• Second Vehicle Kit

• Demco

Second vehicle kit includes everything needed to tow your other vehicle without having to install an entirely new Demco SBS Air Force One supplemental braking system. Includes wiring, air lines, and hardware.

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How to Install the Demco SBS Air Force One Second Vehicle Kit on a 2015 Ram 1500

Shane: Hi, I'm Shane with etrailer.com. Today I'm going to walk you through the installation on Demco's Air Force One Supplemental Braking System on our 2015 Ram 1500.Adding a breaking system to your vehicle, one, is going to make it legal so you can flat tow your vehicle. Two, it's going to make it safer because you're not relying on the brakes on the RV to stop both vehicles.The Air Force One is going to be a proportional braking system. It's going to be designed to work with RVs that have air brakes. How it works is when you apply the brakes on the RV, the air pressure coming from the RV's brakes is sent through to the system mounted inside the towed vehicle, intern applying the brakes. It's going to be one of five main components in a flat tow setup for the Ram 1500.You're going to have your braking system.

You're going to have your tow bar. You're going to have your base plate. You're going to have your wiring. Now there is one extra component, a sixth component that I always recommend when adding a brake system to your vehicle and that's going to be a battery charge line. The reason why I recommend the battery charge line is because your braking system ties into your battery and you don't want to get eight hours down the road to your destination, try to get in your vehicle and start it in the battery's dead.Now to install your braking system on your Ra, it doesn't require you to take the facia off.

However, I will recommend when you're installing the base plate, it's a good idea because you're going to have the facia off to go ahead and install it. It may make it a little bit easier to run your wires down underneath.Now install this unit on your Ram it is a very simple process. It may seem a little bit intimidating, but it's really very easy. You can see how I have mine mounted here. I have it mounted right on top of the fuse panel lid.

All's I did was pop the lid off. I drilled a couple holes in each corner and just ran a zip tie through it. You can see it hold on very well. You're going to have two black wires that are coming off it. One of them is going to be a ground, which I grounded right here to the factory ground.

The other black wire is going to run down and connect to the breakaway switch or the blue wire on the breakaway switch, which we'll get to in just a little bit. You'll notice you'll have an air in and an air out port, and also a vacuum.Your air out you're going to take your airline tube that comes in your kit, you're going to run it from the air out in through a grommet into the inside of the vehicle. Your air in is going to come from the motor home. So what you're going to do is you're going to run a line from there down to the front of the vehicle where you're going to mount your L bracket with your air fitting on it.Your vacuum line. This is going to go to the vacuum line, coming off your brake booster. This is going to be your L bracket with your air fitting. The airline from your air in port is going to hook right into the back of it. You want to make sure when you cut this line you make sure it's not pinch, it's not kinked and it's cut flat.This is going to be our breakaway switch and what this is for, this is just in case our vehicle becomes disconnected from our motor home. It's going to pull this switch and it's automatically going to apply the brakes in the truck. On the breakaway switch you're going to have a blue wire and you're going to have an orange and black wire. As I mentioned, the blue wire is going to connect to one of the black wires on the operating unit. The orange and black wire we're going to run it up the same way right up next to our battery.Our orange and black wire we're going to hook to our brown wire that comes in our kit and also our fuse holder. Our fuse holder is actually going to connect to the positive side of the battery. You want to make sure we're making that connection that the fuse is not in the holder. You're going to take the brown wire, you're going to run it in through the grommet with your airline tube. And the grommet that I used actually is the emergency brake cable grommet. You can see I just put a little hole in and I just fed both of them right inside the vehicle.Our vacuum line, you're going to cut a three inch section over your hose. You're going to put it in one of the check vowels. You want to make sure that the black side of that check valve is facing towards the unit. You're going to put the rest of your hose on the other side. You can see how I routed mine down. I zip tied it right to this factory wiring and I ran it right to this vacuum line here coming off the brake booster.There is a straight section here. You're going to cut it. You're going to get a T fitting. You're going to put your T fitting on your vacuum line from your brake booster. You're going to cut your hose coming down, or your vacuum line coming down from your operating unit. Cut it down to size and you're going to put it on the bottom of that T. You're going to go up a few inches. You're going to add your second check valve. The black side is going to face towards the engine, green side faces towards the T connector. You want this valve on the engine side, not between the booster and the T fitting.Next thing we're going to do is we're going to mount our indicator light. We typically mount it right here on the back of the mirror so that you can see it in the rear view camera off the RV. What this does is this tells you when the brakes are being applied in the vehicle while it's being towed. So what I did is I ran my wire, I just tucked it up my headliner, or inside my headliner right here, right above my windshield. This vehicle has a side curtain airbag. You want to make sure that when running that, that you run it between the airbag and the framing of the vehicle. You want to make sure you're not going over the top of it so it doesn't interfere with how that airbag comes out when it's needed.You can take this A pillar off very easy. You're going to have two little caps here, pop those caps off and you're going to have a 10 millimeter bolt in each one. Remove them, and this thing just pops right off. You can see how I had my wire ran here. I just ran it right down inside. Then right here pulled this side panel off, comes off very easy, just pops off and I ran my wiring right down underneath my dash.While we're here, do you want to go ahead and pop off your sill panel and your kick panel here It's one piece so it comes off really easy, it just pops up. Next you're going to mount your cylinder but you're going to have a read switch and that's what this thing is right here. This is not going to come installed on your cylinder. What you're going to do before you mount this on the brake pedal arm, not that read switch because there is a little bitty screw in there. It's a lot easier to put on while this is down on the floor.Once you get that installed, you're going to have a bracket on there and it looks like this. Tale it, you're going to mount it. You want to make sure you mount it high enough that your foot's not . Your toes aren't going to hit anything. You're going to have a bracket. This is going to mount on your firewall like I have it here. It's going to come with a self-tapping screw is going to make sure you check on the other side. Make sure you're not going to run that self-tapping screw into anything. It's going to have a wire connected to it. That wire connects to the back of your cylinder. Your actuator that is on the brake pedal arm.You want to make sure when you mount this that you mount it so that when the actuator and the brake pedal is depressed, it goes in a straight line towards this bracket. Brake pedal actually doesn't move straight back to the firewall. It kind of goes down, it goes down and in. So you watch, you can see how the backside of my actuator is going straight towards that bracket. You want to try and keep that as straight as possible.Also, the line that's here, you want to make sure you have a little bit of play in that because you don't want your brake pedal to be pulled on and it's so tight that it's applying the brakes all the time. So just make sure that line has a little bit of play in it. It's going to have a little allen head screw that goes on the top of here so you can adjust just the length of that line.We're going to have three wires coming off our read switch, which is on our actuator. We're have a blue wire, black wire, and a brown wire. Brown wire goes to the brown wire that we ran in through the grommet with our airline tube. Black wire is going to go to the red wire coming off of our indicator light mounted on the mirror. Our blue wire is going to connect to the brown . Or I'm sorry, the black wire coming off the indicator light.Then you're going to have a second wire. It's going to come off your black and blue wire between your read switch and your indicator light. You're going to have to run a ground. So what I did is I ran a wire and I grounded it right here to this factory ground driver's side kick . Or underneath the kick panel. Now I can take all my wires, I can put all this back in place, tuck my wires back behind my carpet and everything else up underneath. My airline tube that I ran in here, that was coming from the outport on our operating unit. Ran it through the ground with the brown wire. It hooks right into the top of our actuator.Again, you want to make sure that it's cut flush when you insert it, push it in until it stops. Give it a little tug and make sure it's in there. You want to make sure you don't have any air leaks.Now that we've got everything hooked up, I'm going to go ahead and pull the breakaway switch and we'll see if the indicator light comes on.Now we know our system is working. We'll go ahead and clean up our install, take some wire loom, clean up your wires, and we're ready to hook up through our RV.Again, I'm Shane with etrailer.com I hope this video's helped you whether you're still deciding or installing Demco's Air Force One Supplemental Braking System on your 2015 Ram 1500.