Trailer Brakes

anchor1

I have a trailmaster tandem axel boat trailer to haul my 2002 gs201 I/O. It currently has a surge hydraulic actuator for a brake system which seems to work ok but I am looking at towing the boat to the family lake house which is about 900 miles away and am a little concerned about the braking efficiency at highway speeds. I am looking at converting the surge actuator to an electric hydraulic system using the BrakeRite-II Severe Duty Electric / Hydraulic brake system. Does anyone have any experience with this system and how the brakes perform using an electric / hydraulic system vs a surge system?

1pointofview

I have a magictilt with a surge break.  I drove over 400 miles with ss188 and it was totally fine. I tried to maintain a 65-70mph speed but found myself around 80 at times.  The boat was loaded down with a cooler, 40 gallons of gas and some other stuff we moved from the car to the boat so it was about as heavy as it gets.  Anyway, I had no issue with my surge brakes

cjjjdeck

This is the first boat trailer I've had that has a surge brake system.  Previously, my experience has been with electric brakes, which do have some advantages, like being able to stop trailer sway by hitting the brake actuator on the dash mounted controller (handy feature).  I have traveled about half your trip mileage using a tandem axle trailer with surge brakes, with a bigger/heavier boat, with no incident.  There were some pretty serious hills near my destination, which I was grateful the brake system handled very well.   Although I would "prefer" electric brakes, I have been very impressed with my current surge brakes performance.

Unless you are experiencing problems or having reliability issues with your current trailer, I wouldn't have a problem sticking with your current brake system.

nquirk

I'll throw my hat in the ring as well on this one.  I also have a SS188 with a Trailmaster single axle trailer with surge brakes and they perform extremely well.