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Trailer Wiring Help Needed

Nessism

Nessism

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Hooked up the Harbor Freight folding trailer but the wiring has me baffled. There are only four wires: ground, lights, and two combined turn signal/brake light wires.

How in the heck am I supposed to hook up those combined wires? Tried to hook up both together, figuring the turn signal will just stop flashing when braking and stay lit, which is true, unfortunately both the trailer and the car do this which I don't want.

Any advise appreciated.
 
What about a diode between the indicator connection from the car to the indicator/brake light wire on the trailer? That would stop the feed back from the trailer lights and allow the car indicator to stay off.
 
Nessism said:
Hooked up the Harbor Freight folding trailer but the wiring has me baffled. There are only four wires: ground, lights, and two combined turn signal/brake light wires.

How in the heck am I supposed to hook up those combined wires? Tried to hook up both together, figuring the turn signal will just stop flashing when braking and stay lit, which is true, unfortunately both the trailer and the car do this which I don't want.

Any advise appreciated.
Click to expand...
And of course the car you're connecting to has seperate brake and turn signals? I'm having a flashback to trailer adaptors - see Reese or Hoppy.
 
Ed,

I have exactly what you need. Bought it some years back and never used it (still sold today for $17-$35 depending on where you buy, plus tax/shipping/etc) - Hoppy part number 48915. It wires into each of your separate light circuits and then has the standard four prong trailer plug on the end.

If you want to buy mine (NOS in the package) I'll sell it to you for $10 plus whatever the actual shipping cost is. Let me know.

Regards,
Steve
 
In this day and age You have to have the adapter to isolate the systems
 
I bought one from them a few years ago, the 4' x 8' one with 12" wheels and 1100lb rating as I recall. It had no ground. It appeared that the intent was to ground through the chassis, which didn't work.
 
Incidentally, I have a similar folding trailer. Probably the best single thing I did was to run electical conduit down the underside of the trailer on each side to guide/protect the wiring, especially where it folds. This was done after the previous "brand new" wiring job was damaged by the folding action of the trailer.

By using the conduit to guide the wire away from the bend (while leaving plenty of slack to allow for folding) I eliminated the risk of damage both from folding as well as from road debris. In my case, I welded the conduit to the frame, but you could just as easily use clamps if you don't have a welder available.

Now I just have to fab up some fenders to keep the dirt off the trailer during messy weather! I believe your HF unit came with fenders ... Lucky you!

Regards,
 
850 Combat said:
I bought one from them a few years ago, the 4' x 8' one with 12" wheels and 1100lb rating as I recall. It had no ground. It appeared that the intent was to ground through the chassis, which didn't work.
Click to expand...

Mine has a white wire which grounds to the frame. Of course it attaches to the foldable section in the front so not sure how that will work long term if the pivots develop rust.
 
I bought one from Home Depot in CA in '94. I ended up running seperate ground wires to the lights from the trailer light connector. The fenders bounce up and down on the road and eventually work the mounting brackets hard enough to throw the fenders on the road. I saw one fly off so I stopped and retrieved it. I had no idea when or where the other left the trailer. That little trailer made two trips from CA to MN and back, and I hauled quite a few pianos on it until I deemed it unsafe for the road and retired it to be my cement mixer trailer in the yard. I put two sets of tires on it and made it unfoldable since I have lots of storage room.
It hauled my big lawn tractor around a lot too.
 
Get the adapter from Planecrazy, you will probably be good to go.

What's your tow vehicle? :-k

That is where the difficulty might arise. The HF trailer does not put much load on the system, but if you have light monitors on the tow vehicle, they don't appreciate the extra load of the trailer and may give you erroneous readings. In that case, you will need what they call a "powered" adapter. Basically the same thing, but has a power cord coming from the battery and built-in relays that will send power to the trailer when they are triggered by the tow vehicle's lights.

.
 
4%20way%20wiring.jpg

ED,

I gather that you are asking because your trailer has wires for :
- Right brake/Turn (green wire)
- Left Brake/Turn (yellow)
- Tail Lights (brown)
- Ground (white)

And thst does not match your vehical, your vehical has wires for:
- Left Turn seperate light from brake.
- Right Trun seperate light from brake
- Brake light both left and right
- Tail lights
- ground

So your puzzlement is that it seems that the trailer wiring is incompatable with the vehical wiring, and you are correct, they are incompatable

Need a converter.

Your only option without a converter is to:
- connect your trailer Green and Yellow together and connect them both to the vehical brake wire.
- connect trailer brown to vehical tail light.
- and of course, conect the ground.
Then your trailer will have tail lights and brake lights but not turn signals.
If your trailer is small enough (and your vehical bigg enough) maybe you might find that to be acceptable, but I can not say what Mr. LEO might say, or what Mr Liability Lawer might say if someone clamied that was cause of why they hit you.


.
 
Redman said:
4%20way%20wiring.jpg

ED,

I gather that you are asking because your trailer has wires for :
- Right brake/Turn (green wire)
- Left Brake/Turn (yellow)
- Tail Lights (brown)
- Ground (white)

And thst does not match your vehical, your vehical has wires for:
- Left Turn seperate light from brake.
- Right Trun seperate light from brake
- Brake light both left and right
- Tail lights
- ground

So your puzzlement is that it seems that the trailer wiring is incompatable with the vehical wiring, and you are correct, they are incompatable

Need a converter.

Your only option without a converter is to:
- connect your trailer Green and Yellow together and connect them both to the vehical brake wire.
- connect trailer brown to vehical tail light.
- and of course, conect the ground.
Then your trailer will have tail lights and brake lights but not turn signals.
If your trailer is small enough (and your vehical bigg enough) maybe you might find that to be acceptable, but I can not say what Mr. LEO might say, or what Mr Liability Lawer might say if someone clamied that was cause of why they hit you.


.
Click to expand...


Thanks for the great info.

Yes, the brake light bulb is different than the turn signal bulb. I'm not sure if that converter box Steve has is the right one now. Still confused on what converter I need.
 
I got the same trailer many years ago at Meijers and the rust was an issue..My fix was to weld the two halves in the cradle areas and at the pull pins for the tilt//never had a problem after that
 
Question remains: what is your tow vehicle?

That will determine whether Steve's adapter will work.

.
 
Hoppy 48915 Tail Light Converter (60")

Hopkins-48915-rw-53034-63422.jpg


List Price:$25.99Price:$20.98You Save:$5.01 (19%) Brand:HopkinsModel:48915UPC:079976489157


Looks to me (looking at its manaul) like it has wires for your vehical
- green, RIght Turn
- yellow, left turn
- brown, tail lights
- red, brake lights
- white, ground
and then provides the 4 pin flat pack connection for standard trailer connector.
Some folks might call this a 5 wire to 4 wire converter.

I can not answer what Steve is bringing up about if your vehical will make some alarm if the current for your trailer lights drawn thru your existing circuits for the vehical lights. But I cant image it would be anymore than some indcation light on dashboard or something.

Maybe vcan find more specitic info here here:
http://www.hopkinstowingsolutions.com/

Glad to I can help (knowing how much you have help others).

Dave

.
 
Last edited:
Redman said:
I can not answer what Steve is bringing up about if your vehical will make some alarm if the current for your trailer lights drawn thru your existing circuits for the vehical lights. But I cant image it would be anymore than some indcation light on dashboard or something.
Click to expand...
Yep, usually just a warning light on the display, but it will tell you that the load it is seeing is incorrect. Does not matter if you have a burned out bulb on the car (truck, van, whatever) or the extra load of a trailer bulb. As far as some of them are concerned, a wrong load is a wrong load, hence the alert.

I have always preferred the powered adapters, anyway. Just like the famous GSR coil relay mod, it assures full voltage where it's needed. :D

.
 
Nissan Sentra, all 1.8L of it.:)

After some more thought that 48915 seems to have the proper circuits. According to the Hopkin's web site it should work on my car. Sent Steve a PM, hope he pops back in fast or I'm going to order from Amazon ($15 and free shipping:))
 
Last edited:
Nessism said:
Nissan Sentra, all 1.8L of it.:)

After some more thought that 48915 seems to have the proper circuits, but not sure if it will play nice with my electrical system. Most likely okay, but hard to know for sure. A powered adapter would remove all doubt I suppose.
Click to expand...

Applications for 2001 NISSAN Sentra
46155Taillight Converter Universal Kit (independent bulb turn signals)
Installation Instructions 48915Tail Light Converter (60")
Installation Instructions 48925HD Tail Light Converter (74") w/taped 4-wire flat extension
Installation Instructions 48935Modular Tail Light Converter w/replaceable extension
Installation Instructions

So, there it is, the one PlaneCrazy Steve is suggesting.

(Oh, And I can say that PlaneCrazy Steve is a trustworth guy.)
 
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