Coast Resorts Open Roads Forum: How many of us are there? Owners of Dodge based RV's?

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Topic: How many of us are there? Owners of Dodge based RV's?

Posted By: glw on 09/21/07 09:40pm

Dang - Dang - Dang!!!

I have messed with this trailer light thing for 2 hours...I am lost. Geeez, I've done this 3-4 times, just can't figure this thing out?

I tried to do this the quick way, just to shoot up North in the morning. I bought a couple of these bulbs that have wires on them. Your suppose to be able just to replace the rear bulb(1157) and connect wires for the trailer. I got turn signals and brake lights but NO running lights? If I hook up the wire for the running lights, nothing works? I got something backwards here, maybe just been looking at it too long....LOL. Pig tail has the (grn-yellow-brn) wires and figured which is which on the RV(well maybe not), but these running lights have me puzzled.

[image]

Anyone have any ideas...I am suppose to be leaving in about 5 hours.... [emoticon]

Gary Webb
Phoenix, AZ

Posted By: timmac on 09/21/07 11:06pm

I don't know if this will help but I had a recent problem with my trailer lights and found it was just a loose ground,, funny things happen to trailer lights with out proper grounding, some lights work others don't..

Posted By: Griff in Fairbanks on 09/21/07 11:55pm

timmac wrote:

timmac is right, make sure you've got a good ground to the trailer ... to check, run a wire from the battery's negative terminal to the ground point on the trailer lights' ground.

Sometimes, with the dual element lights (Stop/Turn/Tail), a faulty ground will cause juice to be routed through both elements ... if this is happening, it could cause no juice to your trailer's running lights. (Without getting too technical, the electrons don't always run the path -- or direction -- you want them too.) Instead of your running light being fed juice, it's acting as a ground, with the voltage drop across both elements enough to keep the taillight element from lighting up.

1970 Explorer Class A on a 1969 Dodge M300 chassis with 318 cu. in. (split year)
1972 Executive Class A on a Dodge M375 chassis with 413 cu. in.
1973 Explorer Class A on a Dodge RM350 (R4) chassis with 318 engine & tranny from 1970 Explorer Class A

Posted By: glw on 09/22/07 05:20am

[quote=Griff in Fairbanks][quote=timmac]I don't know if this will help but I had a recent problem with my trailer lights and found it was just a loose ground..[/quote] FIXED...It was the ground! Funny thing is, is this was working great on my truck, but when I moved the boat to the RV, it wouldn't work? I expected this to be a 1/2hr job, not an all nighter....LOL. I had the white, grounded to the trailer with a screw and always just used the conn between the "ball and tongue" as the ground. Has always worked on every other instance...except this one....LOL. I ran a direct wire from the tongue to the frame (used the screw for the license plate on the bumper), and Poof, it worked! Hey this is fun in the dark....:B Ya don't have to keep running back shading the lights to see if they are working... Without having my (Dodge Service Manual) yet, I've leaned on you guys a lot the last month. I do appreciate it and won't forget it either... Here is a link to a harness wiring diagram for use if anyone finds they need it. [url=http://www.championtrailers.com/4%20pole%20wiring%20dia.pdf]4 and 5 wire trailer light "wiring diagram"[/url] Thanks again guys and girls!...I'm off to Wonder land. Gary Webb Phoenix, AZ

Note: Due to invalid formatting, all formatting has been ignored.

Posted By: Leeann on 09/22/07 09:41am

Trish-

It could be the voltage regulator as Griff said, but it also could be the solenoid for the lights under the dash. Ours wasn't grounded well (what a shock!) and made some noise, plus the lights didn't work so well - the bf fixed it by cleaning up the existing ground and adding a redundant ground. We eventually will replace the existing solenoid with 2 slightly bigger ones when we change to the brighter halogen headlights. We found the issue when we installed regular halogens.

'73 Concord 20' Class A w/Dodge 440 - see profile for photo

Posted By: Trish Davis on 09/22/07 10:15am

Do you have any idea how much fun it is grounding wires to a fiberglass body?
Yes, that much......*g*

Leeann, incoming Travco pic!

Posted By: Griff in Fairbanks on 09/22/07 04:35pm

Here's the wiring diagram for the front lights (and horn) on MLP:
[image]

See my Exterior Lights section for what I intend to do, especially regarding the headlights.

The square boxes are relays, which are a good idea for anything that uses a lot of juice. The heavy red lines are always hot +12v and will probably be 12 gauge wire. The heavy black lines are the rest of the circuits fed by the heavy red wires and will also be 12 gauge wires.

The rest of the lines are low-power circuits, such as LED running lights, etc. (This includes the circuits controlling the relays.)

Note there are only two ground points on the entire diagram. (Upper right and lower right.) I'll be using wires (and buss bars) for the ground (negative) side of all circuits. Even if there's a metal object that can serve as ground, I don't trust the iffy connections across the various metal parts of the vehicle, plus copper is second only to gold for carrying current. To me, it's easier to run a copper ground buss and/or string copper 'ground' wires.

Posted By: Trish Davis on 09/23/07 05:52am

....and Griff comes through again.
How cool is that.

Posted By: eyeteeth on 09/23/07 07:43am

Trish, thanks for the offer, but I'm good with my dipstick. I'm ok with the long one. (That really sounds ood)

GLW, My trailer wiring was all screwey. While the harnes was wired to the RV according to color... green, white, brown, yellow... unfortunately, on the RV, Green was the ground, Yellow with left, Black was running lights, and Red was right. I had to pull both tail lights and find the original splices to figure it out, but I think I did the whole thing in about two hours included a trip to the store.

Griff... yep, passenger side. When I replaced the gasket I learned the valve covers are warped. Pretty bad, so I'll be replaceing those at some point. She's holding currently at least.

Off to do some work... I have a lot of projects to try and complete by November.

Posted By: eyeteeth on 09/23/07 09:40am

I'm about to drop the grey tank... I'm wondering if anyone has any words of wisdom... things to look out for. I'm making this up as I go. [emoticon]

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