First, is because my fitting was so hard coming out that now I have to re-plump it. But I want to have the use of it without brakes around my farm and don't want the actuator pushing on the MC while it's not fixed properly. The bolt stops the heavy actuator arm from pushing on the cylinder. It appeared in the past that mine had bent a couple of internal parts of the actuator, so I wanted to fix them and go to the rest later.Just curious, but in what situation do you not want the surge brakes? I converted an M1101 into a brush fire trailer with a 200 gallon water tank and a pump and hose reel... The surge brakes were really smoothly, with no detectable banging or clunking or "surging".
So far as I can tell, they don't work much at all in reverse, because I've backed it up some pretty steep hills, and through ditches without trouble...
There are probably more than mine out there that have less than fully functioning brakes which wear the MC and let the trailer move forward until it bottoms out the cylinder and bends or stops the trailer. I like having a hole to lock out the movement of the actuator in the housing. Shearing two sides of a 3/8 bolt would take a lot of load.
These brakes have the Dexter "free reversing" in them, that releases on backing up. I guess that means we have no brakes going backward.
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