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plastrd · 10-25-2020, 12:31 PM

I'm down to the very last piece of my flat towing setup on my '16 GMC Canyon which is the supplemental braking system. I ended up going with a Brake Buddy and got it all wired up and just went to place the unit on the floor to test it out.

There's a piece of hard plastic trim that wraps around the front left corner of the seat which the left side of the Brake Buddy hits. This leaves the right side of the unit floating in front of the seat a good 1/2" to an inch. The actual seat cushion is nowhere near the flip-up arm. When the Brake Buddy goes through its automatic setup process where it pumps the brake a few times it clearly rocks and twists due to the uneven support and I'm sure it won't work correctly like this.
No amount of adjustment of the leveling feet on the main unit gets me around the trim and I can't slide the whole thing to the right without losing alignment with the brake pedal.

There have been a few threads about this truck and flat towing but I haven't seen anything specific about the Brake Buddy. I reached out to Hopkins with the same question but I'm wondering if anyone else has solved a problem like this?
A well placed 2x4 zip-tied to the handle in front of the seat cushion crossed my mind but was hoping for a slightly more elegant solution.

KTM251ss · 10-25-2020, 04:23 PM

I have a 2019 Colorado. I took a square piece of 1/4 inch plywood with a 2x2 base cut from a 2x4 along the bottom that rests against the seat adjustment rails and then the plywood also rests against that plastic piece you mention. This give my Patriot Brake a strong support to press against.

plastrd · 10-25-2020, 06:35 PM

Pardon the hasty mockup but something like this?
The 1/4" plywood would be trimmed to be about the height and width of the seat front.

plastrd · 10-25-2020, 09:02 PM

I went ahead and cut the pieces down to give it a try since I have plenty of scrap to play around with. I cut the plywood to 19x10" and the 2x2 to 19" and screwed the plywood to it.

Turns out it wouldn't fit behind the Brake Buddy with the 2x2 against the seat track, just a bit too close. BUT I flipped the whole thing over so the edge of the plywood was on the floor in front of the seat track and the 2x2 was up against the handle where the seat is supposed to be pressing and it actually fit quite well.

I fired up the unit and started the auto setup sequence so it would pump the brakes and it didn't twist and rock like before so I think we have a winner!

The previous Brake Buddy design had the rear handle stick out past the back of the unit with an up/down adjustable position and I think that was actually the better design. I think they came up with this one with the assumption that the unit itself would fit underneath the seat a bit so the handle would always press into the seat front but that doesn't work here.

Now that I have this working I have an idea to replicate that old design using this 2x2 or a 2x3 as the cross bar part of that handle at the height of the 2x2 in my picture. That would let it reach the seat cushion and press on it instead of the bulge on the back of the main unit hitting the plastic trim piece first. It'd take up less space than the chunk of plywood too.