This Old Trailer: Finding and Fixing a Broken Wire

Finding and Fixing a Broken Wire Episode of This Old Trailer

In this addition of “This Old Trailer” we are going to cover wiring again. This time we are going to cover the wiring concerning a broken wire. Not talking about shorts, not talking about a ground issue, we are talking about a broken wire. We are going to show you what to look for on that. :40

This is a good clue it is a broken wire, because it is working so far and then all of a sudden it just stops working. Then you know it is probably a broken wire, not a short or blown fuse. So we are going to start at the top and work our way back to find the broken connection. :54

First thing we are going to check is the trailer connector itself. Now this is going to apply to all connectors, not just the simple 4-pull we have here. You want to make sure the connections are clean, they do not have to be shiny or anything like that but they should be clean like this one is here. And also check in the ground. A lot of times the running light circuit is the one that gets corroded up a lot, so if the running light circuit is a problem it could be from corrosion right there. It is clean so go ahead and plug it back together and we will resume our inspection down the line. Also, sometimes the wires going into here get flexed a lot too, sometimes the wire itself will get worn back and fourth and actually breaks. It is rare that this would happen but it does on occasion. So we will work our way down since it passes inspection. So it looks like there is nothing physically wrong with it, what we will do to make sure is we will test right behind the wire here with our light tester. 1:53

Then we will check it periodically after each connection. We are going to make a splice somewhere in here and check before and after. Take your tester and ground it to the wire harnesss ground. That will verify power going into it. Okay there is power going in. We have verified there is power going in so we will check the other side. We have power coming out so we are good there. We will test the power on this wire, go ahead behind this connection. We have power through here so we are good, so we will go through the section of splices here and check that. Double check ourselves. Power here and no power here. So our problem is somewhere in this splice right here. We will go ahead and take it apart to inspect it and see what the problem is. One neat little tip is once you are done piercing the wire, even though it is a needle point that you are checking it with, it might be a good idea to put a dab of silicone on there to help seal it up when you are done, or what we are doing and wrap electrical tape around it. That will keep air from getting to the wire itself and will help out a lot. And theres our problem right there. 3:36

The butt connector itself, the crimp fitting on it looks like its smashed the wire in half and it is barely in there so there is our problem, a broken wire. It looks like it crimped it too tight and sheared the wire basically. If you hold it together you can see that the light is actually working. So simply what we are going to do here is go ahead and replace this splice. Now we reapply our electrical tape to it and we will be done. Now since we found our broken wire here this could have easily happened somewhere else further down the line if there was another splice involved or right behind the light fixture itself. As in the fixtures on this trailer the actual wires itself will push into the light itself. The light could get pulled out or may not have a good connection to begin with. So something like that can always happen behind the lights. Also, if your tail light has a type of connection that has a push pin into it, a small little fixture that plugs into it may get corroded or be faulty at best. So you want to check on both sides of the light itself if you have that fixture. And that pretty much covers looking for a broken wire on a trailer.

Videos about This Old Trailer

This Old Trailer: Finding and Fixing a Broken Wire
This Old Trailer: Finding and Fixing Wiring Shorts
This Old Trailer: Finding and Fixing Wiring Shorts Part 2
This Old Trailer: Troubleshooting the Ground Wire
This Old Trailer: Troubleshooting the Ground Wire Part 2
This Old Trailer: Troubleshooting the Full Ground Wire
This Old Trailer: Wiring Trailer Tail Lights
This Old Trailer: Electric Trailer Brake Installation Part 1

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