Hello all.
I am trying to rewire a friend's trailer. He lets me borrow it all of the time, and the wiring on it is shot. Thought I would rewire it for him.

Specs:
6 foot x 10 foot open trailer.
Has 2 amber running on the sides towards the front (each amber light has 1 wire).
Has 2 brake lights on each side with 2 bulbs in each one (one on side, one at back. also, there are three wires coming out of each tail light assembly, 2 black and 1 red).

I was attempting to rewire it with a 4 pin setup:
Green wire = right turn signal
Yellow wire = left turn signal
Brown wire = tail/license/side marker
White wire = ground

I've got a good ground, and can get the amber running lights to come on. Other than that, it is a mix of the tail lights working and not working.

I have Googled everything known to man (I think), but I can not get this thing to work right.

Thought before I took it somewhere to have it wired, I would check with the forum.

Any idea what I am doing wrong? Where should the tail light wires tie into (i.e. 2 to brown, 1 to yellow/green)? I am at my wit's end.

Thanks in advance.

Cheers.

 

I have found trailer trailer wiring kits to have different wire colors coming out of the light assemblies at times. One kit I bought had a green, a white and a black wire from each light. The green was the side marker light and tail light, the white was the stop/turn light and black was ground.

That assembly is on the shelf over my head - never used that kit.

The kit on my 5x8 trailer uses white/black/yellow from the assembly.

Now, are your lights used or new? If used, the sockets could be so corroded that WIRING is not the problem, the sockets are! If THIS is the case, you can screw around all day and not get anywhere!

YOu can temporarily turn on the parking lights, have the side markers come on, and then use that hot lead to experiment with different combinations of the wires coming out of the light assemblies and therefore identify what is what. Take the lenses off so you can see WHAT element in the light comes on.

Remember, the smaller element is the tail light, the brighter one is the stop/turn.

 

The lights are original for the trailer.
The tail lights look just like this:

There is one black wire coming from the side tail light bulb and a black and a red wire coming from the main tail light bulb.
Thx.

 

I've had an odd one like this. The pigtail fro, my wife's Mazda plugs into the trailer, but the Ford style plug doesn't fit the Westin module all that well, so I cut all the wires, and just manually connected them. Brown to brown etc. When I plug the mazda into the trailer all works except the running lights, ie the taillaights, brakes and turn signals come on just fine. When I plug it into the Ford Explorer everything works as normal, so that tells me I may have an issue with the Mazda connection on the taillight. Yours is a probably similar situation, as if you've done the new wiring, it's either in the bulbs or the wiring load.

 

I'll bet the sockets are all corroded and crappy!!!! I'd buy a new kit.

But you can try this:

Connect the red wire to ground and each black wire, one at a time, to a hot lead and see if you can get the bulbs to come on. I'd assume the wire from the side tail bulb lights up the side light AND is connected to main tail light, too. The other two wires are stop / turn light and the ground wire for the entire assembly. My bet is that the red one is the ground (as odd as that sounds) but it may be the black coming from the main bulb is ground. Taking the lens off, you may be able to tell which wire is what.

BUT AGAIN... I'll bet the sockets are all corroded up!

 

Think I'll go to Harbor Freight and start from scratch.
- Harbor Freight Tools - Quality Tools at the Lowest Prices