Troubleshooting Trailer Lights Not Working When Trailer is Hooked up to a 2023 Honda Ridgeline

Updated 04/15/2025 | Published 04/12/2025

Question:

is this the right place to pose a question? Hope so! I bought a 2011 chalet alpine that I am rehabbing. Only thing bogging me down at the moment is the rearlites, which dont work with my 23 honda ridgeline. honda has been thru the truck 2x and an independent trailer shop thru the trailer without finding an issue. when i plug is my friends ford 150 pickup all works as it should, but my ridgeline doesnt activate the lites. I saw some cases on the ethernet saying ii could be fuses but ford says they are all right. im flummoxed! any ideas appreciated.

asked by: Peter D

Expert Reply:

Hey Peter, thanks for reaching out!

You're definitely taking the right steps in troubleshooting by separating both the truck and the trailer. Since the trailer worked just fine with the F-150 I think we need to focus our efforts on the Ridgeline. Have you tried hooking the Ridgeline up to a different trailer to see if it has issues there as well?

If you still see issues with a different trailer, then you need to inspect the wiring and fuses on your Honda (even if the dealership said everything is good). If you DON'T see the issues with a different trailer, then my guess is that the ground on your trailer needs to be improved because something is lost between your truck and trailer.

Let me know what you find out!

expert reply by: Jon G

Peter

4/15/2025

Hi John, thanks for the analysis! I did finally get the lights to work but it was by pushing harder on the coupler that I would have thought we should have taken. They work pretty well now. I just have to get a few more things on it and then start to work on the refrigerator. Now that I've got that fixed, it's on to the refrigerator which hopefully won't be too tough since I know it worked at one time. I confirmed there is power to the plug that the reefer is plugged into, but haven't had time yet to complete. The diagnostics that I found on YouTube. YouTube. May come back and bug you some more. Reasonably good and I'm hoping to get it out camping the next few weeks now that the snow is passed. Cheers, Peter

Jon G.

4/15/2025

@Peter Glad to hear it was a fairly simple fix for your lights! Yes, let me know if you run into any issues and I'll be happy to help out any way I can!