Installed a REDARC Tow-Pro Liberty Trailer Brake Controller

Yesterday I installed a REDARC Tow-Pro Liberty trailer brake controller. I ordered 3 different parts, but only ended up using 2 of them.

The brake controller kit:

The knob itself is an interesting setup with a light-pipe directly above the knob.

The nut has a step in it so it can reach the knob threads:

The Honda compatible TPH-013 wiring harness that you have to buy separately:

I also bought the universal knob mount, although I ended up not using it:

I installed the knob here:

I wire-tied the red box firmly to a steel support bracket behind the dash. The box has a 3-axis accelerometer inside that automatically determines its own orientation, so it can be mounted in any direction. Then it goes through an "auto-learn" period where it figures out what braking feels like as you drive normally. I have no idea how well it works yet... I'm scheduled to pick up my new travel trailer on Friday.

Wiring it up was dead simple. The wiring harness I bought just plugs directly into the pre-existing Honda trailer brake harness and then directly into the RedArc brake controller. By far the hardest part was just mounting that knob to the dash. There's a lot of dash space to the right of the ECON button, but there's a plastic dash support behind most of that area. I ended up drilling through the dash and through a flat area of the plastic support behind the dash. It was kind of a pain, but I couldn't find an easier location. The very bottom edge of the left side of the surround around the instrument cluster might be another possible location.

Because I don't have a trailer with brakes yet, I cannot comment on how well it works. The one thing I do know is that pushing the knob button turns on the Ridgeline brake lights.

One thing to note about the knob installation... The instructions say to drill a 3/8" hole for the knob and a 1/8" hole 0.3" above it for the light pipe to pass through. So you might need some dial calipers to accurately locate the light pipe hole above the main hole. Unfortunately the round portion of the nut shank is larger than 3/8". I used a step bit to drill the hole and the nut shank would not fit through it. I ended up having to enlarge the hole using a "W" letter bit which measures 0.386" and even then the nut was pretty tight in the hole.

If you choose to use the optional universal knob mount, then you're also supposed to drill two holes, but the smaller one gets halfway cut through by the larger hole. It's only an anti-rotation hole. So you could probably just drill one hole and then use a round needle file to create a half-hole for the key to fit into.