Trailer lights-gctid403664

[captharv Founding Member Find all posts View Profile Close captharv]

Yesterday, I took the boat out for a test ride after doing the yearly maintenance. Impeller, oil, all filters, drive lube spark plugs, etc.

As I was parking the vehicle, the park ranger sadi my right side trailer light was out. I tried it and it was out.

Upon getting home, I turned on the vehicle runniung lights and 4 way flashers. no nothing out of it.

LED lights do not backfeed into the other side if a ground is bad, so I got my DVM meter out and determined the ground lug was not connected. Pulled it apart and it was corroded. Some WD40, and a wire brush cleaned it and I reattached it.

However, you trailer manufacturers: Hire an engineer. Some bonehead specified a light with a stainless bolt, a steel nut, a tinned solder lug, onto an aluminum trailer. To accelerate the corosion, the trailer's rear is submerged in salt water to laiunch and retreive........

Addenda: the sme idiot also specified unsealed crimp connectors on the wires. DUH!

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Last time I redid a trailer I ran ground wires to all lights. In a car, grounding stuff to the chassis is fine... even in a "regular" steel trailer it works. But in a boat trailer, it never seems to work out due to crevice corrosion. Separate ground wires, soldered + heat shrunk connections and sealed LED lights and you have a pretty foolproof trailer light setup.

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Don't blams the trailer manufacturer, they probably used the hardware to install the light fixtures that the light fixture manufacturer provided. You can blame who ever installed the lights for the un-sealed crimp connectors.

Shortly after I purchased my current boat trailer I coated all of the exposed metalic connections with silicon dielectric grease to help prevent the problems you are mentioning with corroded connections.

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ishiboo wrote:
Last time I redid a trailer I ran ground wires to all lights. In a car, grounding stuff to the chassis is fine... even in a "regular" steel trailer it works. But in a boat trailer, it never seems to work out due to crevice corrosion. Separate ground wires, soldered + heat shrunk(+ dielectric greased) connections and sealed LED lights and you have a pretty foolproof trailer light setup.

There I made it more foolproof.

Maybe if I went after everything metal on my boat and trailer with a bucket of grease and a spatula the salt wouldn't be so mean to it.