Trailer Lights grumble [Archive]

Daddles

9th June 2006, 04:59 PM

Rotten trailers. I've wound up having to rewire every trailer I've ever owned grrrrrr. The wee boat trailer that Redback lives on has been with me for two years now so I guess I can't complain, especially with the dogy looking wiring on it. Today I was trying to find out why the left indicator wasn't. Did the 'check the globes and avoid breaking the plastic lenses' bit. Squirted RP7 around ... which fixed the brake light that hasn't worked in months :rolleyes: . Still no yellow flash on the left hand side. So I tugged at the wires ... and the wire for that indicator pulled out of the square section draw bar, broken about 3" from the front.

So, I've got a broken wire, inside a square section tube :( .

I came inside for a grump and a coffee before trying to find enough slack in the system to rejoin the wire, but secretly, I can see myself spending tomorrow rewiring the rotten thing :mad: Ah well, at least I'll have some reliability if I do :rolleyes:

Richard

Daddles

9th June 2006, 07:38 PM

hey Daddles

Have you thought of using one of those boards that sits on the back of the boat and a long piece of 7 core up to the back of the car. (edit: with the lights on it ;) )

No water, no out in the rain, no redbacks, no rust etc

cooooool

dazzler

And then you've got to remember to take it with you, you have to find somewhere to hang it, you have to ... They're a pain in the neck when on trailer lights aren't the go, believe me (had both :cool:

In this case, the wee trailer never goes into the water and on trailer lights do the job nicely ... when they're working. :D

Well, the problem was, as I said, a broken wire. What the bloke who'd wired the trailer had done was to wire the entire trailer with seperate wires - not one of those bundles. However, he had used a 5 wire bundle from the plug to about 6" inside the draw bar. At that point, the two indicator wires are JOINED - one twisted together with some tape and the other with one of those cheap, horrid crimp thingies. Why? Goodness knows. What's even more amazing is that the crimpy thing had about an inch of blue wire (in an overall yellow wire) before being joined back to the yellow with the ends twisted together and some tape.

WHY :confused:

The rest of the wires might be continuous or might be joined even further into the draw bar. Who knows.

But the rest of his wiring job seems to have been done well ... except that he's used seperate wires - cripes, he even use a junction box where needed.

I was able to run an entire, new flasher wire so that's now new from the plug to the LH indicator. I didn't bother with the RH one - I tend not to fix things that are working. Running that wire was fun because it had to go through 3 bits of square section tubing, each at 90 to the others and exiting none of them at the ends :eek:

And, just to cap it all off, the plug was full of rust and had to be replaced:cool:

This sort of bodgy job is typical of the bloke that did this trailer - for example, he'd made a beautiful set of cradles for the Heron that came with the trailer when I bought it (sold the boat and kept the trailer). Thing is, he'd used CHIP BOARD for the cradles so as soon as the trailer got near the water, which boat trailers tend to do, the chip board packed up. I'm guessing the wiring job was done well except for these two wires that, for some obscure reason, were joined just inside the draw bar.

He even got the colour coding right (a first for me in a second hand trailer :rolleyes: )

And even more remarkable, when I plugged it into the car, all the lights worked properly THE FIRST TIME :eek: Being a typical woodies job, it was finished by torch light :rolleyes:

So, the trailer wiring is working again. Should I talk about the shoddy welding job I did this arvo?

Richard