My brother took his newly acquired camping trailer, the one I added solar, extra batteries, inverter, etc. to in the other thread, out to the mountains to do a little shakedown test.
Everything worked great except we had a little issue with the brakes. One side was running hot and smelling of burning pads. The other side was cool to the touch. We decided to test turning off the trailer brake controller to verify it wasn't the bearings. Stopped a little bit later and both wheels where cool.
We did another test with manually activating the brakes while I walked along side it and I could hear the brakes working on the side that was previously overheating. The cool side didn't really sound like it was making as much noise
So, today after we got back, I took both drums off to inspect the pads, magnets and anything else that would cause it. Didn't see anything out of the ordinary. Magnets on both look good with plenty of life left. Brake pads have about an 1/8th or maybe a smidge more. Manually moving the magnet lever seems to properly activate the appropriate pad for forward and reverse.
The side that was over heating was full of brake dust and was considerably more dirty. The cool side was much cleaner. Almost as it it wasn't really doing anything.
I haven't done a lot of work on these types of brakes. So I was wondering other then the usual wear and tear, worn pads and sticking mechanisms etc, is there anything in particular I should inspect or test. Obviously I need to check and ohm the wires and magnets to make sure they are both working the same. Maybe even measure the current on each one. The self adjusters looked ok and moved freely and ratcheted as I would expect.
At this point I thinking that the overheating side was working ok but was doing all the braking for the trailer and the gain had to be turned up higher to compensate for the cooler side that wasn't engaging. With the one side doing all the work it was generating more heat. Does this seem possible? The question is why, if the magnets tests out good, would one be doing all the work with the other doing nothing?