Re-wire Trailer

[snagger]

That's it. I've had it with my trailer lights. My boat is a 2000 and the last few years i've done nothing but fight with the lights. I'm terrible at wiring and just want the entire thing re-wired. I'm from Hudson, WI. Anybody no a good place to bring it and have them do it for me?

thanks.

[LightningBG]

I can rewire it for ya. Send me a PM if you're interested. I'm not any type of electrician, but I've done a half a dozen trailers.

I'm on the east side of the cities often.

[LightningBG]

Otherwise. I bet handi-hitch in north st. paul would do it, (if you want a real professional)

[BoxMN]

If it is shorlandr, you can buy the harnesses and run it fairly easily. Harnesses cost about $15 each, and for our 3000# trailer (1997) we needed two to do essentially the whole trailer - no need for any splicing, it all plugs together. When you pull the old wires out, tie a string to it to pull the new wires back through. But watch how it all is wired, because you have to do a couple wires at a time for the crossmember in the middle, and the marker lights. We also had to loosen our axle to get the plugs on the ends of the harnesses to make it through the grometted holes. Not hard to do, but helps to have a couple guys to help feed and pull, and also double check to see which way to yank it out from, ha!

While you are at it, if you haven't yet, switch to ALL LED lights. That has been the biggest good thing we have done with our trailers in the past few years. No more unplugging, lights haven't blown, and they are BRIGHT!

Good luck.

[CAMAN]

You shouldn't need to replace all the wiring unless mice or something damaged it. Just should need to replace all the light fixtures with new sealed LED's. A little dielectric grease on all the connections, clean up all the grounds, and the lights should work great for years.

[jeffreyd]

i agree with last post, i would not pull new wire. most issues are with the actual light housing corroding and loosing the ground. I am pro led lighting, less amps to run, less issues, no more changing the bulbs, biggest thing is clean power in and very clean protected ground. the use of dielectric grease will keep the connections free of water. one other thing you can do is use heat shrink on the connections to aid in keeping moisture out. good luck, nothing like an electrical issue. a good test light is a mans best friend.

[BoxMN]

You shouldn't need to replace all the wiring unless mice or something damaged it. Just should need to replace all the light fixtures with new sealed LED's. A little dielectric grease on all the connections, clean up all the grounds, and the lights should work great for years.

Agreed in general. But we kept blowing fuses, and isolated it (by unplugging wires until we found the one causing the fuse blows - sometimes it took 150 mile trips, sometimes happened going over the curb bump... doh!) to the brown wire on starboard side. Lights were all new and LED, it ended up being a short in a corroded wire where it wore through inside the trailer channel. But yeah, I would start with new lights and new connections first easier and probably the problem. Don't forget to get new marker lights if you have wide trailer, as those middle lights are corrosion magnets too. Can get those in LED as well as the side markers. Good luck!

[EBass]

I just put new lights on this past weekend. My other lights I had for 5 years so that's pretty good considering how much I fish. I bought the LED's from NAPA and wow they are bright. They were $75 though. The only splicing I had to do was at the lights. I did buy some shrink tube with glue inside to seal the splices.

Any ways, you could have a worn spot that's grounding somewhere. My lights were crazy. I would put the right blinker on and they all would flash. Left side worked like a charm. Messed with it for days (redid all the grounds, repalced bulbs, light tester, had the same issues when my buddy hooked up his truck) said some choice words and just bought new ones.

New LEDS are awesome.

I can help with the install if needed too. I'm in EP, but will be fishin this weekend.

[hanson]

The absolute biggest problem with trailer wiring is the ground. The trailer frame itself is the ground circuit. Most lights either ground to the trailer through the mounting bolts, or they have a separate 6" or so ground wire that you screw to the trailer. There are sooo many opportunities for a ground to fail, come loose, corrode, etc.

Solution is to pull a white ground wire down each side of the frame, connect it to the white wire coming off the pigtail at the hitch, and connect it to each of the ground wires at the lights. Some lights don't have the ground wire so I look for replacements that do to solve that problem.

Then every connection and splice from the hitch back gets soldered w/ heat shrink tubing. Now you have a wiring system that should be trouble free.

And LED lights are the way to go, worth the money.