Mounting Bracket for Tekonsha P3 Brake Controller
The Tekonsha P3 is a very popular brake controller for towing travel trailers. Unfortunately the 2 mounting brackets come with the P3 are poorly designed. The plastic bracket feels very flimsy; the 3 tiny screws come with it don’t provide much strength on soft plastic found in most car’s under-dash panels. This makes it almost impossible to securely mount the controller under dash panel. When I took the delivery from Spokane Airstream dealership, It fell off 2 hours into the return trip and I had to use duct tape as a temporary solution.
After I got home I designed a 3D printable mounting bracket and it has worked flawlessly in past 18 months.
- It doesn’t require screws – The back of the bracket provides a large contact area so it can be securely mounted with double-sided tape (3M Scotch 5952 VHB). You can remove the bracket by sliding a string into the gap then move the string back and forth to loosen it up.
- Low profile, it doesn’t stick out as much as the stock brackets, which makes it far less prone to your knee bumping into the controller when you get on/off your car.
- The controller can be easily detached when it’s not in use.
Instructions
- Click here to download 3D printable STL files
- Print them. it must be printed vertically, with support on print bed to provide great strength.
- Dry fit the bracket against the under-dash panel, It’s perfectly fine if the curve doesn’t match the panel perfectly – you can accommodate this by
- Under-dash panel has a tighter curve than that of the bracket – apply double-sided tape at top and bottom edge of the bracket.
- The Bracket has a tighter curve than that of the under-dash panel – apply 2 layers of double-sided tape at the top and bottom edges of the bracket
- Important! Clean surfaces of under-dash panel, bracket using Isopropyl Alcohol. let them dry.
- Apply double sided tape to mounting bracket, peel off the tape backing, press it against the under-dash panel for 30 seconds.
- Let the bracket rest for 12 hours without inserting the brake controller.
- As a bonus, I also designed a cable clip for controller’s cable management.
Hope this is useful, you can also find more 3D printable accessories for Airstreams here.