Today we are going to convert our jet ski trailer side markers from old incandescent fixtures to new 3 LED light fixtures. We are going to be using Optronics sealed miro-flex mini LED marker, part number AL191AB. We will also be using the black mounting bracket, part number A91BB. And we will finish it up with a single pull wire 12 inch lead from Optronics, part number A91LW. And we will be doing a side marker on either side of the trailer so we are going to need two of each of these part numbers. These are the triple LED lights we are going to be using. There are three LEDs inside the housing and a mirror reflector inside and our amber colored lens on the outside. On the reverse you will see that the whole circuit board is sealed up. The only thing that is exposed is our two contacts. One is going to be for ground and the other is going to be out power source. 1:07
We will take our wire lead. Plug it into the connector port on top and make sure we are snapped in. The second contact on the bottom of the light will make contact with our ground pin here that will actually ground through one of our mounting screws. We will mount our bracket to our trailer frame first using the existing hardwire on our trailer frame. Then we will feed the wire through and our light will snap into place. Alright, let us get started by removing the old lights off of the trailer. The first thing we need to do is pop the old lens cover off. Next we are going to remove the two self tapping screws that hold the light fixture in place on the trailer frame. We are going to hold onto those and reuse them when we install our new lights. Next we will pop our light fixture off. Pull out the wiring just a little bit. Then we will cut it as close as we can to the light fixture so we have a little bit of excess. 2:24
Really quick, we are going to clean out the mounting area and touch up the rust spots with a little bit of black paint to make it look nice again. Get the dirt out of the way. If you find that your mounting location is particularly rusty, go ahead and hit it with some sandpaper, get it back to clean metal and then touch up your paint. But we are not too bad on this trailer, so we are just going to cover it up really quick. We are going to take our wire strippers and trim just a little bit of insulation so that we can attach it to our new light lead. Next we are going to take a butt connector. Slip it over our wire. Next we are going to take our new light with our power lead installed and we are going to take a piece of heat shrink tubing and slip it over. We are going to use our heat shrink to protect our electrical connection once we are done. We have cut off a little bit of the length so we do not have quit so much excess wire and now we are going to just strip off a little bit at the end. Take our other end of the wire. Slip it into our butt connector and again take our crimper and clamp down. You want to give it a quick tug to make sure our electrical connection is secure. We look pretty good so we are going to slide our heat shrink tubing up and over our butt connector. And you can use a small torch or even a lighter to heat it up and it will shrink tight around your wire and give you a good seal and protect your connection. 4:10
If you want, you can also use some electrical tape once you have used the heat shrink for a little bit of extra security. Keep the heat moving and turn the wire back and forth so you get a nice, even shrink and seal. Now we are ready to mount our bracket to our mounting location on our trailer tongue. Just slip our bracket through our wire. Take the self-tapping screws that we had installed earlier and tighten everything down. Now we will go ahead and run these screws all of the way in. Now we are going to snap our wire lead back into our light. We will feed our excess wire back into the tongue of our trailer and we will just snap our light into place. Next we will repeat the same procedure for the other side of the trailer. Once we have done that, we can test out our lights. And that does it for our LED side marker conversion on our jet ski trailer using part number AL191AB, A91BB and A91LW.
This Old Trailer: Replace Wiring with a 7-Pole Cable
Today on This Old Trailer we are going to replace the wiring on this trailer. Right now, this trailer has a 5 pull socket here and the owner uses a patch cord in between here and his tow vehicle. What we are going to do is remove all this and add a 7-way cable that leads right to his tow vehicle. We will be using part number H20046. We will unbolt the connector here. Then we will go ahead and untape it and undo the screw right here, it should release the inside part where the pins are and the wires are connected. Tale that, push everything out. Simply disconnect our wires. 1:04
This Old Trailer: Wiring Trailer Tail Lights
In this edition of “This Old Trailer” we are going to wire up the lights on this trailer. Previously we had hooked up electric brakes and you can see, right now we have the junction box installed on there and we have wires ran for electric brakes. We have nothing for the actual tail lights themselves. That is what we are going to start on today. :30
This Old Trailer: Finding and Fixing a Broken Wire Part 2
Next we are going to go to less obvious stuff. Say for instance you have got your ground wire hooked back up to the frame and weird stuff happening out back. We will have to dig into the wire itself a little bit. In this case basically you want to check your wiring connection. You have a wiring connection right here that could be a potential problem right there. Chances are whatever fitting you used to put the wiring together might come loose. And also we have something kind of obvious too. The wire here has a little bit of road rash on it. You can see the bare wires on the inside. Even though it may still be making contact eventually this wire here will corrode up inside there and it will just lose contact so we are basically going to have a broken wire eventually. Lets go ahead and take this apart here we will see what we have got on the inside. 01:14
This Old Trailer: Troubleshooting the Full Ground Wire
We have demonstrated all of these fixes checking the ground on the trailer. The trailer itself is actually used as a ground obviously. Now there is some cases where you boat trailer guys and some small utility trailers out there, the ground is actually carried in a separate wire that lowers the trailer frame completely. The same tricks apply to check and make sure your light is working. Again the connection to the light could be bad or it could be actually a smashed wire underneath the frame of the trailer or also up front where you have got a little bit of road rash dragging the ground. We will go ahead and show you next an example of that type of wiring on a different trailer. 01:04
This Old Trailer: Troubleshooting the Ground Wire
The first thing you want to do when you first start working on electrical problems is you want to divide and conquer. You have two parts here, the truck and the trailer. You want to verify which one actually has the problem. Chances are it is going to be on the trailer, but then again you still want to check the truck too. So use a separate light tester, hook a ground not to the frame but to the 4-pull ground itself because this is what is going to carry the ground to the trailer. :52
This Old Trailer: Finding and Fixing Wiring Shorts Part 2
Now we will move on to another circuit. In this case it will be the right turn circuit. And we will just check the signal on that. On the right turn signal here again, the same principle applies. Start from the front and work you way back. What happens a lot is that on some of these lights here where the wire gets ran in behind it, there is a channel that these wires fit into. However a lot of times, even on brand new trailers. This wire actually does not fit in the channel, they miss when they put it together. The wire gets smashed between the light and the frame of the trailer. Eventually they wear down to a minuscule spec of wire that is visible but it will cause a short and all kinds of headaches.
