Not sure if this is correct location to post this question... but somebody out here is bound to know trailer brakes... I just got finished replacing one of the magnetic pucks on my trailer. I was getting no brake action forn that side, pulled the drum off and found one of the wires to the puck was broken. So I replaced with a spare one lying around, same size , 2 wire pig tail coming off. My question is this: can the wires that energize the puck be reversed? I checked for brake signal before I put everything back together, and the puck gets voltage , although I checked by putting a screw driver up against it and it drew the screw driver in, but I wasn't really impressed with how hard it pulled. So I proceed to put everything back together and I defineitly am not getting a lot of brake out of the one side. I can hear it energizing, but it doesn't come close to slowing the trailer down, empty of course. Any thoughts??

You might check the ground connection of the coil. If its rusty, it will stop/slow down the current draw, ie, magnetic pull. Also, you might check the condition of the supply wire for nicks/cuts. Any strands cut, means less current handling capability.

The axis the brake link pivots on needs to be clean also. This is another path for ground.

One should be able to drive at 25 mph, hit the manual bar to full gain, and both tires should be smoking with two black marks.

As a last resort, compare the ohm valve of both coils and replace the suspect one with a new one.

Ev ,
appreciate the response, I've been banging my head on this one all weekend, and as usual, I need the trailer wed night, so there's the element of pressure. I'll check out the grounds,again. I've taken apart and cleaned once but I didn't think about the mount for the coil being a ground path as well. The wiring for the brakes branchs off seperately from the lighting , and the prevoius owner pulled the ground wires from both branches and hooked them to a common lug on the front of the trailer. I've done some internet searches on this issue and most of the causes for weak brakes are bad grounds or poor adjustments..I've since remedied the adjustments, so I know that's good. It's got to be a ground issue

Yes, by the coil being grounded, I meant the coil has two wires, one gets hooked to battery, the other gets connected to a ground screw. The coil in itself is isolated from ground.

Sometimes the screw is on the linkage arm the coil is mounted upon, and sometimes, it is butt-connected to another length of wire and grounded elsewhere on the frame, such as your case, a stud at the hitch.

Another troubleshooting you might use is an ammeter function of your DMM. Use a separate battery and hook the DMM to one lead and apply power and see how much current is being drawn. Compare the value to the other side/coil current draw. The more current, the hefty'r the field. If both coils are wired separately at the hitch ground stud, makes accessibility to coil current right there and easy. The DMM doesn't care about lead hookup, it'll still indicate the amount.