Rotating trailer light bulbs needed to make them work

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Rotating trailer light bulbs needed to make them work

Postby cdeturk » Wed Jul 08, 2015 8:23 pm

Here is the issue I am having with my trailer lights, which are incandescent dual filament type.

1) I plug the pigtail to the vehicle
2) I turn on the turn signal or hazard. The vehicle lights work but the trailer lights do not. (An electrical test shows the socket is getting power.)
3) I take out a bulb, turn it 180 degrees, and push it into the socket. (It won't plug all the way in since the offset pins do not match) **The bulb lights up.**
4) I turn the bulb 180 degrees and insert in properly into the socket. The bulb lights up and works properly.

The bulbs will continue to work properly until I turn the turn signal or hazard off, then back on. At this point I need to rotate the bulb 180 degrees again to get it to work. This is the case with both the left and right bulbs.

The tail lights work fine. The issue is specific to the turn signal and hazard lights.

Any thoughts?
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Re: Rotating trailer light bulbs needed to make them work

Postby GreenLake » Wed Jul 08, 2015 9:12 pm

Logically, if you manipulate the bulb (whether the way you do it or any other way) you are affecting the connection between the bulb and the socket. If that is corroded in any way, disrupting it likely improved the contact momentarily.

If running the bulb in reverse is truly necessary, then one could go out on a limb and posit that some galvanic process is putting down an isolating layer on the bulb itself that gets reversed under reverse polarity. The thought here would be that while contact is maintained and current flowing, the layer can't complete itself, but once you turn off the electricity, that quickly happens. I'm not going to put any money on that theory, though, pretty as it is. (If you are curious, try turning off the electricity with the bulb inserted backwards after running it for some time - might be hard if the electricity is intermittent anyway, as with hazards).

Let us know what happens if you clean the bulbs and sockets and use dielectric grease.
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Re: Rotating trailer light bulbs needed to make them work

Postby GreenLake » Wed Jul 08, 2015 9:14 pm

I have a trailer where the lights will fail to work when testing, and if I give up in frustration and just start driving, they will be fine when I get home. This one for both LED and filament bulbs.

(On an aside, I can really recommend upgrading to LEDs. My trailer has one of each, as I replaced a light destroyed in some unfortunate encounter. I'm waiting for the other one to go so I can complete the upgrade!).
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Re: Rotating trailer light bulbs needed to make them work

Postby jeadstx » Wed Jul 08, 2015 9:30 pm

Trailer lights are always a mysterious thing. I was having a similar problem which turned out to be a bad ground wire. It had something to do with a bad ground due to the tilt joint on the trailer. I ended up running a ground wire to each tail light to get them to work properly.

John
1976 Day Sailer II, #8075 - Completed the 2011, 2012, and 2013 Texas 200
1952 Beetle Boat Swan Catboat
Early Rhodes 19
1973 Mariner 2+2, #2607 - Completed 2014, 2015 and 2016 Texas 200
1969 Day Sailer I, #3229
Fleet 135; Canyon Lake, Texas
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Re: Rotating trailer light bulbs needed to make them work

Postby TIM WEBB » Wed Jul 08, 2015 10:55 pm

When TRW got me, there were no trailer lights at all, just clamp-on incandescent lights for the transom. That wouldn't do, so I ended up rigging up a lighting system on the trailer. Didn't want to worry about grounding issues, so I completely isolated the wiring from the trailer (ran ground wires all the way from the plug to the lights). Eventually ended up putting LEDs back there. When that trailer died and I got a new one, it came with built-in incandescent lights in welded-on housings. Really wish they were LEDs, but so far so good. When they fail (which they will, eventually), or most likely before they fail, I'll look into what I can do to put LEDs back there ...
Tim Webb
1979 DS2 10099 The Red Witch
(I used to be Her "staff", in the way dogs have owners and cats have staff, but alas no longer ... <pout>)
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Re: Rotating trailer light bulbs needed to make them work

Postby UCanoe_2 » Thu Jul 09, 2015 8:33 pm

Power at the socket but intermittent functioning of the bulbs suggests poor grounding at the bulb. Have you tried cleaning the bulb and socket with fine sandpaper? If your tail lights are OK, your main ground is probably good.

LED lights are much more dependable, and are well worth the price.
"George Washington as a boy was ignorant of the commonest accomplishments of youth. He could not even lie."
-- Mark Twain
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Re: Rotating trailer light bulbs needed to make them work

Postby GreenLake » Thu Jul 09, 2015 9:41 pm

+1 on the main ground being good if any bulbs light. On my trailer, the ground across the hitch was unreliable, but improved with driving. I don't have a socket, just a connector on a tail of wires out of the back of my car. Said wire tail and connector had their own issues, best I can reconstruct, a situation that improved with driving as well (heating up of a bad connection?). In any case, on that trailer, I could have the left or right light out when leaving the dock, and all would be fine coming home. I never ran this down, and several full re-wiring attempts later, have decided to not bother. Another trailer I have works like a charm towed from the same car. Go figure.
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Re: Rotating trailer light bulbs needed to make them work

Postby UCanoe_2 » Fri Jul 10, 2015 8:04 am

GreenLake, have you considered an exorcism? I am firmly convinced that a lot of boat trailers are possessed by demons.

IIRC my LED trailer lights cost about $80, and I installed them in the parking lot at Auto Zone in half an hour. Most accidents involve a greater expenditure of time and money.
"George Washington as a boy was ignorant of the commonest accomplishments of youth. He could not even lie."
-- Mark Twain
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Re: Rotating trailer light bulbs needed to make them work

Postby cdeturk » Sat Jul 25, 2015 1:27 pm

Thank you for all of the ideas!

After a few more hours of fiddling, I have thinking it is the vehicle. I do not have electrical meters so I took it down to the local shop. They hypothesize that it is the black box that is part of the "pigtail" in the vehicle.

I have ordered an new one and will try it tomorrow.

If that does not work I will try the exorcism as the next step.
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Re: Rotating trailer light bulbs needed to make them work

Postby ChrisB » Wed Jul 29, 2015 8:23 am

You might also want to consider getting the lights off the trailer altogether and putting them on a light bar. I never could never keeps lights functional for long so I made a light bar from a 2x4, laying it across the transom of the boat. The lights are attached to the bar and the wire harness lays in the boat while on the road. The whole thing gets put in the car before the trailer is dunked. Secondary benefits are that it gets the lights in a better position for the knucklehead behind you to see them and the light bar is also the aft mast support. Since the light bar is wood, it forces me to run a dedicated ground wire which is a good thing also.
Chris B.
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Resolved: Rotating trailer light bulbs needed to make them w

Postby cdeturk » Sat Aug 01, 2015 2:36 pm

Today I plugged in a new pigtail into the vehicle. It works!

My theory is that at some point I did have an issue in the trailer. In fiddling with that I must have fried the circuitry in the black box in the pigtail inside my vehicle.

My lesson: include plugging a different trailer into the same vehicle to confirm you actually have a trailer problem and not a vehicle problem.

Thanks for everyone's help!
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Re: Rotating trailer light bulbs needed to make them work

Postby GreenLake » Sat Aug 01, 2015 3:12 pm

You don't need to keep a second trailer. At many auto parts stores you can purchase a small connector with LEDs on it that you can use like a virtual trailer to test your car's wiring. Really handy and not expensive.
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Re: Rotating trailer light bulbs needed to make them work

Postby RayD » Sun Aug 09, 2015 9:10 pm

This is a bit different from the original problem, but relevant so I'll pass this on. Years ago I had a trailer built out of stainless pipe with a little skiff on it. I was fishing at night and every evening that I was fishing I had to go around the trailer recrimping connections to get the lights to work. I finally got fed up with it and bought a new harness. I stripped all the old wiring off and rewired the trailer, soldering every connection and covering each joint with heat shrink tubing. I sold it 3 years later, having never touched the wiring again.
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Re: Rotating trailer light bulbs needed to make them work

Postby GreenLake » Tue Aug 11, 2015 5:23 am

I'm on my third harness.... The other trailer I have has no problems. Go figure.
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