Trailer Light Question?
 

Ok I have an 18' triton on an aluminum trailer the lights are old dont work half the time and I am thinking about rewiring it the old school country boy way. Thinking about just using an extension cord wiring it up leaving the wire tie wrapped to the frame for easy futue access. My question is this there are a couple little yellow lights on th frame in the mid point that I dont think have worked in years do they hafta be there?? Can I put reflector tape instead or just wire the tail lights and be done. Is there some law I dont know are they just there and can be forgotten about??

it works perfectly, I have been doing it on all my trailers for 20 years and the extension cord last damn near forever. by having a designated ground wire the whole way completely eliminates any chances of bad ground connections anywhere. I used to have to replace the wires every few years before I got smart and went to using extension cords.

get a basic 50 foot 16 gauge extension cord and cut it in half, the green is your ground wire, white is for light and black is for blinker. this color code is easy to remember and means you never mix up any wiring. I go straight from tongue to the tail lights without tapping into the wiring, then if I need marker lights I use 16 gauge lamp cord wire to run to the marker lights. I do this because most often the problem areas in the wiring are breaks at the spot where its tapped into for the marker lights.

Technically if there is a marker light it is suppose to be burning. But that's a law mostly enforced on commercial vehicles.


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Remove the marker lights and put some reflector tape. Also, while you're at you may consider setting them higher so they don't go underwater when you back your trailer down.

Keakar, I like this idea.

Cappy, send me a PM if you need any assistance I can help you out. I live in Broussard.

Really appreciate it man and I wouldn't mind heading to Broussard got family over there not to mention great cracklins and boudin. But I'll try it my self. God bless ya for offering though.

Wheres the cracklins and boudin in broussard?

if you need lamp cord for marker lights the hardware store sells it for something like 30 cents a foot. I found it best to run it from the tongue running back rather then from the tail lights back forward. this makes the tail light connections easier to make waterproof. the one thing to watch for is test your left and right blinkers before wrapping it all up in case you got the yellow and green wires from the plug mixed up for the wrong side. another tip is use the old wires to pull the new wires through the tongue. it sounds obvious but sometimes its easy to forget and just pull the wires out before realizing what you just did lol.

also I mount my marker lights on the tongue forward of the yoke so it stays out of the water when launching, those damn marker lights always seam to go bad after getting wet.

one last tip is I would use all LED marker and tail lights and for the tail lights, smear a big blob of silicone on the wires where they go into the light. that spot seams to never be sealed well and I find it almost always leak and let water into them.

if you want even more extra abrasion protection you can by a roll of wire loom to cover your wires like this: http://www.ebay.com/itm/50-Feet-FT-1...item43dc844952

you can never say never but after doing all this I think you would never have to touch your trailer lights or wiring again for as long as you own the boat.

Three years ago, when I bought a new boat the first thing I did was buy a 20 foot joint of .25" x 2" galv flat bar to raise the lights up above the top of the boat. I have not had any problems with these lights.

On the Yellow side lights..... after 2 years I had 2 of them stop working and a fuse was blowing so none of the trailer lights would work.

What I found was that the Yellow lights were installed wrong. When the light was installed, the hole for the wire to pass through was drilled about an inch to the other side. This caused the wire to be "pinched" between the light and the trailer causing it to break off the insulation and short out the fuse.

I replaced the 2 bad lights and drilled new holes for all the light wires. All lights working a year later.

I did the same but I used the unistrut from home depot, http://www.homedepot.com/p/Superstru...10EG/202714274 its like $20 a length (one length was enough to do all 4 vertical posts) and its all predrilled for mounting bolts. I bolted them to those heavy duty bolt on step fender supports. I don't see them made anymore but it was 1/4" galv square stock welded 90 degrees to a flat plate that you bolt to the side of the trailer. this lets it slide forward or back on the frame and then the unistrut leans over just enough to match the side angle of the boat and is bolted tight in position. I put one in front and one to rear of the fenders and then I added 5ft side guide boards. its "almost" impossible for the boat not to line itself up correctly as I drive it on.

this made a solid, strong, drive on trailer, and the ones at the back of the fenders I left long enough to reach the top of the sides of the boat so it lifted the lights up to the top of the sides of the boat. I think it was 24" high at the front posts and 30" high at the rear where the lights mounted.
http://www.saltycajun.com/forum/pict...pictureid=3965http://www.saltycajun.com/forum/pict...pictureid=3966

the trailer came with new LED tail lights so I now have two LED tail lights on each side for extra visibility. the slim LEDs are these if anyone is interested in getting some like that they have been working trouble free for 5 years now so they seam to be very good quality lights. I bought them because I sometimes graze the fence when backing the boat in so I broke off a few lights that way lol