Hot Wire
07-01-2004, 09:57 PM
A friend of mine just got a new boat and trailer and noticed his wire connector from the car gets very warm and is actually melted. The trailer connector looks fine. He could not get left turn, brake or lights on the left side of the trailer. Right side works fine.I tried my truck on his trailer and could not get lights on the left also. He took it back to his boat dealer and they found a connector on the trailer came off. They fixed it and he now gets left lights but his connector on his car still gets hot after about 15 min driving. Any ideas what is causing this?
There are a couple of things that you should do.
This is an easy way to check out everything.
Take a charged battery, your tow vehicle etc. and a pair of jumper cables.
Connect the jumper cables to your charged batteries, and then connect a lighter pair of jumper calbes (with smaller aligator clips on the end of the jumper cables.
Another way to do it is to take another 4-connector flat connector that you would normally connect to your car.
Then, using only a single pair of wires, go through each of the trailer circuits.
First the white (ground) and brown for the tail lights.
Then the white (yellow)
and finally the white (green) wire.
In each case, connect the jumper wires to those pairs of wires, and go all the way around the trailer to insure that the correct lights are working.
After they have been on for a while - check the wires for any signs of heating or excess current.
If you get through this testing, then the issue is in your tow vehicle connector.
If the boat connector melted; it may have overheated the tow vehicle connector.
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Perhaps, before you do anything, simply cut off the current tow vehicle connector and install a new 4-connector flat pack.
Plug into your trailer and see if all lights work properly, and see if the connections continue to run cool.
By the way, you did say that the dealer replaced the trailer 4-connector flat pack didn't you? If it hasn't been replaced, be sure to replace that connector as well.
When a connector overheats, it often "blues" the connector and causes a high resistance connection to be created. When this happens, it turns the connectors into a "toaster".
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The final solution, might simply be to replace both the two vehicle and trailer - 4-connector flat pack. Perhaps one or both of the connectors have bad connections due to the overheat.
Take care
REW
risor39
07-03-2004, 01:25 PM
My trailer had a problem with the left side too.So I thought the light was burned out again.After taking the light apart and inspecting it,saw that the filament was fine.So I touched the ground to the trailer and it was working fine.Put the wole works back together and no lights again.So I took it apart and noticed there was alot of paint on the trailer parts that held the light.I took the paint off the parts that touched one another and everything works fine.All of my lights are working fine now.I should have checked this alot sooner as my lights were never the brightest even when new.Some trailers have parts that are painted before assembly and are never grounded correctly to start with.