When you have a light problem on a trailer, there are three probabilities:
1. Bad bulb
2. Bad ground
3. Bad wiring/connection.
Got a road trip scheduled tomorrow and by way of preparation drug the little trailer out and checked it over. No Joy on the ditch side tail light.
First check - bad bulb. Broken filament. 'K, easy fix, replace the bulb. No joy.
Second check - Pull the fixture off the mount and clean up the mounting surfaces to make sure I have a good ground. Visual check indicated it was sorely needed. No change. Huh.
Third check - I have one of those nifty plugs with the little indicator lights and it showed power at the plug, multimeter showed nada at the bullet connectors on the light end. Wire was pretty crusty, brittle, cracked insulation. No problem, I have a stash, I'll pull a new pair through the conduit by taping it to the old pair. Wrong, buffalo breath, that wire was NOT coming out of the conduit. Which pretty much pointed to that as the problem. Strung some new wire on the outside and crimped on some new heat-shrink connectors (twice, after discovering a miss-crimp) and voila! let there be light!
Now I just need to free up the tongue jack (or more likely hack it off and get a new one), check the tire pressures and swipe the spare off the big trailer.
1. Bad bulb
2. Bad ground
3. Bad wiring/connection.
Got a road trip scheduled tomorrow and by way of preparation drug the little trailer out and checked it over. No Joy on the ditch side tail light.
First check - bad bulb. Broken filament. 'K, easy fix, replace the bulb. No joy.
Second check - Pull the fixture off the mount and clean up the mounting surfaces to make sure I have a good ground. Visual check indicated it was sorely needed. No change. Huh.
Third check - I have one of those nifty plugs with the little indicator lights and it showed power at the plug, multimeter showed nada at the bullet connectors on the light end. Wire was pretty crusty, brittle, cracked insulation. No problem, I have a stash, I'll pull a new pair through the conduit by taping it to the old pair. Wrong, buffalo breath, that wire was NOT coming out of the conduit. Which pretty much pointed to that as the problem. Strung some new wire on the outside and crimped on some new heat-shrink connectors (twice, after discovering a miss-crimp) and voila! let there be light!
Now I just need to free up the tongue jack (or more likely hack it off and get a new one), check the tire pressures and swipe the spare off the big trailer.
