Of course not much I could do on the road but take it easy, and reduce the gain on the brake controller. 

It was only a 3 day trip and mostly highway use, not intercity panic stops...

Anyway, fast forward to this:

When I returned home, I began the frustrating process of trying to figure out what was wrong. 

I stripped out all the old POS brake wiring and re-installed some good stuff, and I soldered EVERYTHING. Both brakes work fine now...after two days of crawling around on the ground underneath the r-pod up on jackstands. 

 

The problem turned out to be this one in particular, hanging off the left side brake, and here is what I found:

Even though it looks good, there is continuity from the green wire to ONE of the other wires, but not the other wire. This is the 'ground' pair, where it splits off from the left side electric brake, feeding the right side electric brake. 

So if you end up with the left brake heating up and the right side still cold....suspect the 'scotchblocks'!

So it makes sense that half of about 12 volts (6 volts to each brake in series) would be enough to provide the full braking action needed in most cases. 

Bingo!

Give that man a SEE-GAR!

Owning one but paying others to maintain and repair it is not an option for me. 

Not when they embed the ads within the video. Youtube goes into "ad mode' (not a term, just what I call it), where they disable FF/RW, etc. except for play/pause. yada yada yada.

That said, if the ads are third-party content inserted by youtube then most of the time the ad-block will remove it.

A sponsor who is mentioned in the video by the person on camera...well I just keep tapping the right arrow button.

Works for me.

Nope, don't do that. 

In order to be sure about how well the brakes are 'balanced', you need to take the trailer out for a short drive and apply the brakes at a moderate level, enough to get them warm, but not hot.

Accelerate to about 20-30 mph then bring it to a more or less normal stop on a quiet rural road. Set your tow vehicle parking brake and hop out and using the back of your knuckles reach around behind the tire and quickly brush your knuckles against the brake drum on each side, using your right hand on the left side, and your left hand on the right side. They should both feel warm to hot, depending on how hard you applied the brakes. 

(Note: Some high tech guys use an IR gun, but I'm old-school and don't trust those for this job...it's up to you)

They should feel (or measure) about the same, but keep in mind that these also have 'nevr-adjust' brakes which actually means, they NEVER adjust....but just in case one actually DID....you might find one side warm and the other side HOT. It might be that the 'auto-slack' (as we call them in the trucking industry) has allowed one brake to have too much slack. They can be adjusted manually, but they need to both be functioning electrically before you make any manual adjustments.

Another test you can do is to take the rig to a deserted dirt or gravel road and while driving at about 5 mph, apply FULL braking to the trailer brakes ONLY, using the brake controller. You should be able to lock up and skid BOTH trailer tires. You can get out and look for scratch marks in the dirt, or you can aim your mirrors down to see the tires. If you can lock them both up this way, they are probably balanced close enough for safety. 

And, if the brakes have less than a few hundred miles on them they are probably not 'bedded in', so you need to get a lot more miles on the rig and then check the brakes again.

Always an educational experience on this forum . . . at least for me.

OG - where did you purchase your IR thermometer, sounds like a worthwhile investment to me.

NOW who is 'old school'?

Mic drop.  

I just walk around kicking or thumping the tires at every stop!

We got one of those from HF, and it was non-functional. Took it back, and had to pay a $6 "re-stocking fee". Was kind of irritated at that, so when I got the replacement out to my truck after, and found the replacement had the exact same problem (or at least the exact same symptoms), I took it back in. They at least took the 2nd one back without charging me a re-stock fee.

So in the end, that $20 thermometer cost me $6 plus two trips to HF. Since we live outside of town, each one of those trips were ~~ 3 hours each. So the crappy $20 thermometer not only cost me $6, but also took 6 hours from my life. and I still didn't have a thermometer.

After leaving HF, I went to HD, and got a nice Klein Tools IR thermometer, which works very well.

I did not find any other area to post this but here.  I have two sets of 10" Lippert brake shoes with springs for manual adjusting brakes only.  There are free to a good home except postage.  They were purchased from Lippert by mistake a couple of years ago.  New in the original packaging.

Steve