electric over hydraulic brakes

bill j

New member
Has anyone experienced any problem after repeatedly immersing electric over hydraulic brakes in salt water? Any problem if not launching in fresh water? thanks for the help - bill j
 
Bill,

If you mean getting the discs, calipers and hubs under salt water, no problems after 6 years. The brakes are always washed down with fresh water after every dunking. If you're referring to getting the electric over hydraulic controller under water, don't do it! It's not waterproof. That's why I mounted mine up high on the trailer post.

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Any time you dunk steel/iron/brass into salt water, you've got corrosion. And not all launch ramps have wash downs. So sometimes Journey On's trailer sits without flushed brakes.

That said, I've had less problems with the electric/hydraulic brakes than with drum brakes.brakes. In 6 years, I've replaced one caliper (leaking) and 2 set of pads. When the boat sits over the winter, the rotors do get rusty and the pads have to smooth them off.

If you want good brakes for a C-Dory 25 or Tomcat, electric/hydraulic with disks are the only way to go. Any maintenance is well worth the great breaking.

Boris
 
From the tongue back electric over hydraulic brakes are identical to surge brakes. The only difference in the system is that instead of a master cylinder activated by a piston attached to the coupler the master is activated electrically by a controller in the cab.

So no additional corrosion issues versus surge brakes.
 
Matt Gurnsey":udmo7okl said:
From the tongue back electric over hydraulic brakes are identical to surge brakes. The only difference in the system is that instead of a master cylinder activated by a piston attached to the coupler the master is activated electrically by a controller in the cab.

So no additional corrosion issues versus surge brakes.

Agreed. It just that most who invest in the more expensive electric over hydraulic systems also tend to invest in the more expensive disk brakes whereas the surge systems more often come with drum brakes. Since it's easier to clean/rinse disc brake and since disc brakes are more often made with higher quality metals (either S.S. or coated steels) they have less corrosion overall. So I think some of the attributes being attributed to electric over hydraulic are being confused with disc vs. drum benefits.

That said, the electric over hydraulic systems are much better for down hill tows, backing up (unless you have an automatically actuated surge brake lock-out) and for more finely tuning the braking of the trailer in general. Now that I have electric over hydraulic on my TomCat's Float-on trailer, I'd never go back to surge brakes.
 
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