When you have a light problem on a trailer, there are three probabilities:

1. Bad bulb
2. Bad ground
3. Bad wiring/connection.

Got a road trip scheduled tomorrow and by way of preparation drug the little trailer out and checked it over. No Joy on the ditch side tail light.

First check - bad bulb. Broken filament. 'K, easy fix, replace the bulb. No joy.

Second check - Pull the fixture off the mount and clean up the mounting surfaces to make sure I have a good ground. Visual check indicated it was sorely needed. No change. Huh.

Third check - I have one of those nifty plugs with the little indicator lights and it showed power at the plug, multimeter showed nada at the bullet connectors on the light end. Wire was pretty crusty, brittle, cracked insulation. No problem, I have a stash, I'll pull a new pair through the conduit by taping it to the old pair. Wrong, buffalo breath, that wire was NOT coming out of the conduit. Which pretty much pointed to that as the problem. Strung some new wire on the outside and crimped on some new heat-shrink connectors (twice, after discovering a miss-crimp) and voila! let there be light!

Now I just need to free up the tongue jack (or more likely hack it off and get a new one), check the tire pressures and swipe the spare off the big trailer.

I have a couple of boat trailers and it is always a big surprise when they work. I've rewired them a few times and it does seem that the new led fixtures are better.

But the wiring can get dinged pretty easily. Also the connectors get crusty just sitting. I often have to clean up the pigtails with some steel wool,etc.

Wireless trailer lights, magnetic, move them from trailer to trailer, no wires, just charge, plug n go.

Just an example, there are thirty million kajillion billion options on Bezosworld.com

[URL= https://www.amazon.com/SLARY-M...YWFV&th=1]Link[/URL]

Huh. Might have to look into that. I have three tagged trailers, be nice to just swap one working set of lights around.

Compared to automotive wiring, I'll take a trailer any day of the week!

My son and I just finished his first big welding project...a 6x12 utility trailer from scratch. He got some steel tubing for free, so I just had to pay for the decking, axle, fenders, wheels, hitch stuff, jack, and wiring. Not exactly cheap (thankfully we live a county away from about half the trailer manufacturers in the country, so surplus parts are locally available), but a fraction of buying retail, and I was pretty happy with how it turned out.

The wiring was the easy part except I had to do it twice because he melted it welding the tongue jack bracket on....doh!

quote:

Originally posted by HRK:
Wireless trailer lights, magnetic, move them from trailer to trailer, no wires, just charge, plug n go.

Just an example, there are thirty million kajillion billion options on Bezosworld.com

[URL= https://www.amazon.com/SLARY-M...YWFV&th=1]Link[/url]

Read the reviews . There are some issues . Magnets breaking , cracked housing .

quote:

Originally posted by selogic:

quote:

Originally posted by HRK:
Wireless trailer lights, magnetic, move them from trailer to trailer, no wires, just charge, plug n go.

Just an example, there are thirty million kajillion billion options on Bezosworld.com

[URL= https://www.amazon.com/SLARY-M...YWFV&th=1]Link[/url]

Read the reviews . There are some issues . Magnets breaking , cracked housing .

as I said about this one set, it's just an example

there are hundreds of them listed, HF has them, most auto parts stores...

I used to have an old snowmobile trailer that was "converted" to a utility trailer. Great little trailer, sucky wiring.

The joy came from the fact that it was light enough that I could easily turn it over in the garage, run all new wire in conduit (cheap 1" PVC ), and put it back into service.