If you have a boat trailer or a utility trailer for hauling all-terrain vehicles and other hunting gear, you will have a wiring failure.

It's not a matter of if, but when. Trailer wiring is fragile, and it endures enormous abuse even under the most gentle treatment.

I experience a wiring failure almost every year on all of my trailers. The ATV trailer gets hit the worst because the wiring is exposed in key places, and I drive it through rough vegetation that tears the wiring loose.

Boat trailer wiring is more protected, but friction ultimately gets the best of it and causes lights to fail. Fortunately, wiring failures are easy to fix and with a little foresight, you might even be able to avert them.

At least once a month, it's wise to check your trailer wiring in the driveway. Make sure the running lights work, and that the brake lights and turning lamps work properly. It's better to spot a problem at home than for a law enforcement officer to spot it for you on the road.

My War Eagle 1542 boat rides on a Diamond City trailer. The wiring splits at the tongue and runs the length of the trailer atop the bottom lip of the frame. The wires thread through several metal cradles in the frame that hold it in place. These cradles are where 90% of my failures occur.

Trailer wires are protected by a thin shroud of plastic insulation. Plastic and steel do not play well together, and steel always wins in the end. Wiring flexes and bounces on the cradles in the normal course of driving and turning. Eventually, the friction wears away the insulation and allows the wires to contact the steel cradles, resulting in a short circuit.

That will deactivate some if not all of the lights in that circuit. For example, the running lights might not work, but it won't affect the brake lights or turn lamps. At any rate, you have to fix it.

Start at the pigtail, or the connector, and make sure there is no exposed wire there. Make sure also that your ground wire is still connected to the trailer frame.

If you're all good there, then you will have to get under the trailer and follow the wire by hand all the way back to the terminal lighting. A sight inspection is not good enough because the insulation break will always be on the bottom of the wire where it is not readily visible. By sliding your thumb and index finger down the wire, you will feel the break before you see it. Do not be surprised to encounter two or more breaks.

There are two ways to remedy a short circuit. You can wrap the exposure with electrical tape the good, old-fashioned Arkansas way. The problem with that solution is that the wires are often badly degraded and might even be broken in the braid where you can't see it. If the wires are badly stressed, the same forces that caused the short might continue to do damage inside the protective sheath that you created. You will have to get back underneath the trailer at some point, unwrap your makeshift solution and do it right, anyway.

Doing it right means clipping out the damaged section of wire and reconnecting the undamaged ends with a connector. The problem you now have is that your wire is now too short to connect. You will have to splice in a new length of wire with two connectors. And you will have to do it with every wire in the circuit.

Don't do this the good, old-fashioned Arkansas way and just splice in any old piece of any color wire you have in your toolbox. Splice lengths of green wire with a piece of green wire. Use yellow on yellow, brown on brown and white on white. Wiring is cheap. Correct color coding will make it easy on yourself the next time you have to make a repair, and if you sell your trailer, it will prevent the new owner from sticking pins in your voodoo doll.

To fix a line failure, again, clip the damaged section from the entire circuit. Splice in a new, color-correct section to every wire in the circuit. Cut the splice line a generous length so that you have plenty to work with.

Strip a small amount of insulation from the clipped ends of the original wires and from both ends of the splice. The good, old-fashioned Arkansas method involves cutting off the insulation with a pocketknife. I've done a good many of them this way and have the scars to prove it. A proper wire stripper makes short work of this otherwise laborious process.

Insert the exposed ends of the original wire and the splice into connectors. I prefer butt connectors because they are thin and linear. T-Tap connectors are larger and bulkier. Push the wire tightly against the inside of the connector and pinch it tight with your stripper press.

We strongly recommend cutting only one wire at a time. If the green, yellow and brown wires are all cut at once, you run the risk of splicing a brown wire to green, or a brown to yellow. I've done it. No matter how often you read your Bible, this will make you cuss.

Also, make sure that your repaired wires continue to run through the cradles. This is easy to forget, and you really don't want to look at a brand new, beautifully spliced wire hanging outside the cradles. I've done it. It will also make you cuss.

Here's where you set yourself up for future failure. The spliced wire, with all those thick connectors, are now too thick and bulky to sit inside that tiny diameter cradle. The repaired sections will be forward or aft of the cradle. See where we're going here? That's right. The section of wire now in contact with the cradle will erode and eventually short, as well.

You can combat this by wrapping that section of wire in as many layers of electrical tape as can fit inside the cradle. You can also coat them in heavy duty epoxy.

Hopefully, you won't have to mess with it again, and you can use your trailer with the security of knowing that all of your lights work as they should.

Oh, and if your lights still don't work, check your fuse inside your vehicle's utility fusebox. A short in the trailer wiring will often short out a fuse. Your owner's manual will tell you the fuse location and its required amperage.

Print Headline: Trailer wires are easy to repair

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