Hooked Battery Backwards

[Camping Andy]

I just went to the cave to get my popup out of storage. I made the mistake of hooking the the black to negative. I noticed it when I pulled out and the trailer brake controller on my F150 was not working correctly. So I pulled into the parking lot outside the cave and realized my mistake. Once I got home I checked everything in the camper and it all seems to be working after replacing the 40 amp fuse. The only thing not working properly is the trailer brake controller. i checked my truck fuses but cant seem to find anything blown. Any ideas?

[PushedAround]

I think that you need to provide a little more information. In the automotive world, black IS negative and red is positive. Exactly what were you hooking up?

[sknight]

Originally Posted by PushedAround

I think that you need to provide a little more information. In the automotive world, black IS negative and red is positive. Exactly what were you hooking up?

But in the the camping trailer world, for some god forsaken reason, often times black is positive and white is negative. I was shocked when I saw my 5er had conventional for DC red positive and black negative, so shocked that I hand traced the cables to make sure.

I'm curious as to why the brake controller is acting up, the on board battery feeds the break away switch, but that's it, unless the plug was out of the break away. When you say acting up, what's it doing?

[Camping Andy]

my camper black is positive. I hooked the battery up backwards. No my truck (f150 factory brake control) trailer break control light up but the meter is no longer working. I hooked a friends trailer up to it as well to test the controller and eliminate my camper brake. It did not work with the other trailer as well. I looked at all the fuses but could not find none blown. I tested them with a meter.

[Ray,IN]

Brake controllers get their power from the vehicle battery, in your case the truck battery. It feeds 12V power to the electric brakes with no connection to the camper battery. As SKnight said, unless the emergency break-away cable was pulled, there can be no connection between your controller and the camper battery.
There is a connection between those batteries though, through the 12V charging line in the umbilical cord plug. This would hopefully blow a fuse to prevent damaging your truck charging system. There is where I would look for damage first.