Trailer wiring

[spitz31]

I think I have a short on one of my trailer wires, just wanted to see if anyone who knows more about this can confirm what's going on.

When I hook up the trailer lights, the left turn signal does not work on the trailer. After a couple miles of driving, there is a short which blows a fuse out my right turn signal on my truck. Should I just inspect the left turn signal wires, or just check the ground wiring? I just got the darn thing rewired last year and already its on the fritz again.

Any suggestions would be appreciated...

[lawdog]

The ground is the first thing to check for I think in most any trailer lighting problem. They are a real bugger if you don't find a problem real quick at the connections/ends, you can pretty well expect to be going through the whole thing. I haven't had many problems lately (knock on wood), but honestly, I have gotten to the point with trailer wiring that if it gets to be a problem, I just pull a new harness and start over. It saves hours of looking/screwing around and they don't cost that much. On most trailers they are very easy to do yourself too.

[JohnMickish]

Bad grounds don't blow fuses, unwanted grounds (shorts) do. Lawdog is right, unless you have more time than money you would be better off just replacing the harness and follow the directions and do it yourself. Much less headaches this way.

[Dan Thiem]

Also remember to use some silicone dielectric grease on the plug in connectors. I think that stuff works really good to keep corrosion down to a bare minimum.

[BIG DS]

What brand of vehicle are you pulling with? The reason I ask, is that I have seen the trailer wiring harness on the truck end of things cause this very problem on certain brands. Ford and Jeep being the most common. If you have a digital volt ohm meter handy, take the bulbs out and test the green (right turn), yellow (left turn), and the brown (tail and marker lamps) seperately with the red probe on the wire and the black probe grounded to the trailer. Use the continuity setting or the ohm setting. If there is a short in one of the wires, the ohm value will change or the continuity beeper will sound. Even though your trailer was re-wired last year, it is possible there is a wire pinched. Good luck.