Sledbed snowmobile trailer, when I turn on the running lights, it will pop the fuse, I have isolated the problem to the trailer.Is there an EASY way to find which one is grounding out rather than pulling the whole damn thing apart? Thanks in advance!
sounds like a bare wire somewhere, just have to follow the wires and find it.
What you have, my friend, is a wire touching the metal frame, somewhere.
Unless you can see it, you have a project.
My guess would be near the tongue of the trailer or right behind the tires.
Let the treasure hunt begin
Dog
With a inexpensive ohm meter you can narrow down what wire is grounding out at the pigtail of the trailer. Ground one lead from the ohm meter to the trailer frame and touch the other lead to each of the connections of the pigtail, check all of them because you may have more than one grounding.
Sometimes you have to pull on the pigtail. I know this from experience, my Nitro trailer has the wires running inside the box beams of the trailer. I found it was easier to spend the extra money to replace the whole harness.
Had the same thing on my old triton had a heck of a time finding it. Ended up being the three light clearance marker on the back of trailer. The wire was actually pinched between light bracket and frame from install. A few yesrs of vibration and corrosion = dead short.
Let me run this from the start, last Monday on my way back from Duluth is when the problem started, it was snowing and wet. I made it about half way when I noticed the problem, today, I do not have the same problem, matter of fact, the lights are fine and I have not done a dang thing to it. What I can see is that there is a little corrosion on the plug for the running lights(flat four) and I have one running light receptacle that is busted open. I hooked up the lights to the vehicle and they worked fine, no blown fuses, nothing! So, do I blame it on moisture, add some dialectic grease and replace that one lens or do I yank the whole harness and replace it? Im not opposed to it, I want the fastest repair possible but if it is not necessary than Ill leave it.
Had a very similar issue on my boat trailer, and the culprit was the light bar on the center of the trailer in the back. Actually, I had the problem twice. First time, the sealed light turned out to not be so sealed. It got a little water in it each time I dunked the trailer. When it got enough in it, it would slosh around and cover two light leads at the same time and pow, blown fuse. Got that fixed and about 6 months later it started blowing the same fuse. Turned out that when I put the light bar back on after fixing it, I pinched a wire. Once it wore through, it would short out as soon as you turned on the lights.
I would first check the lights for water in one of them. Then I would check for a wire that has the insulation worn off. It sounds like it may be a water issue since it happened while trailering in wet conditions.
My guess would be that since it was snowing you may have had slush sticking to a wire weighting it causing it to rub on the frame creating the short. Now that the extra weight is no longer pulling the wire everything is fine. I would look at the wire any place it would accumulate slush and that is most likely where the insulation is wore through. I would use a rubber vulcanizing tape then cover it with a quality electrical tape (like 3M) to protect the rubber tape.
I’ve had really good luck with the liquid electrical tape for patching worn wire until you can get time to fix it right. I’ve had it on wires for a year before changing the wire out without issues.
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I’ve had really good luck with the liquid electrical tape for patching worn wire until you can get time to fix it right.
I have had pretty good luck with it too, to me more than one coat is necessary. And in a situation like this I would go with something that will withstand the friction better.
Believe it or not it’s probably worth the time to just rewire it. All of the wiring on the trailer is the same age so you might eliminate one spot just to have another show up later. I’ve always been surprised at how much plastic is in trailer wire insulation, even when it doesn’t wear throught it cracks, especially in cold weather.
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Believe it or not it’s probably worth the time to just rewire it. All of the wiring on the trailer is the same age so you might eliminate one spot just to have another show up later. I’ve always been surprised at how much plastic is in trailer wire insulation, even when it doesn’t wear throught it cracks, especially in cold weather.
Someone else said the same thing earlier in this post and I think thats just what I will do. Im going to do a quick fix on it as soon as I find the bare wire and pull the whole harness come spring time. Thanks for the input everyone.
Just a tip I picked up here. Instead of using a wiring harness for a trailer, buy an outdoor extension cord and use that. That way, you’ve got two layers of insulation to wear through. I did this on my Shorelander last fall and it worked great!
I’ve found it easier to rewire than to search for a worn wire….At any point where wire might touch something,run it thru something else first. Clear plastic tubing available at any hardware store works well,I’ve also used old garden hose – especially in the tongue.
Sometimes you’d have to slit the hose and retape it once it’s in place and wires run thru.
What Twister and John said.
Ohm it out, it’ll save you some time. And liquid electrical tape rocks, especially for boat applications.
I dug in to it over the past few days and the only thing I came up with is it got soaked and debris got into the broken lens and plug which shorted it out. Replaced the lens and gobbed a bunch of dielectric grease all over the plugs, I cant imagine I am going to have any more issues. If I do, I will pull the whole harness and replace it and the plugs and receptacle, everything is 8 years old and older so to replace it just seems faster than chasing down electrical issues.
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