Where's the white wire?
Coleman77
trailer wiring? I have a camper that someone cut the wires off of
right at the tongue, there are six total, R,B,BL,BR,Y, and GR. Six.
Right now, I have just spliced on some 6 wire trailer wire. I backed
up my pickup and ran jumpers from the 4 wire flat to the pop-up.
Oddly enough, the turn signals and brake lights worked but not the
parking/marker lights on the brown wire. If my ground was missing,
the turn signals shouldn't have worked right? The schamtic shows on
more wire not present at the tongue, a white wire. Do I need to add
this? Did it slip inside the tongue when they were cut-off? The
interior lights do work when the converter is set to 110v, so they are
being grounded somewhere. Oh, and I didn't have the hitch hooked up
if that matters.
Karl
Alicia Howard
a connection through the ball hitch. I don't know how old the camper is,
but my 84 Coleman lists out the wires like this:
Red - reverse lights
Blue - brakes
Black - 12v aux. power
Brown - tail and side markers
Yellow - left turn and stop
Green - right turn and stop
White - ground
you are correct in assuming that the lights shouldn't have worked without
a ground, but with a ground the camper doesn't need to be hitched up to
the tow vehicle. My guess would be that the white wire is lost in the
tongue. You should try to fish it out or run a new one. You may be able
to locate and trace it if you can find the wiring access points within
the trailer. My coleman has a "panel" on the driver's side rear under
the sink cabinet that can be opened, the converter can be removed from
under the dinette (driver's side, front), and the wiring harness runs
inside the square frame tubing from the toung and exits under the
driver's side brake lights where the bumper mounts to the frame. I
recall from crawling around under this thing the other day tracing a
wireing bug that there were 2 ground wires attached to the frame
approximately under the converter area. If you do end up adding a new
ground wire, don't forget that you can't add to much capacity so use 12
ga (10 ga is probably overkill on a pop-up).
It has been a while since I have fooled with anything with a 4 wire
hookup, and I'm not sure I have ever seen one that was done correctly
(spent alot of time when I was younger on a farm that every truck and
trailer was wired completely differently it seemed), but I am pretty sure
that the 3 female (covered) terminals in the connecter on the truck are
hot and the one male (exposed) is a ground. It is possible that your
"running lights" wire was grounding the trailer, I've seen stranger
things but I don't know what wire you hooked where. I don't know what
kind of truck, but my 97 F-150 w/towing pkg has one fuse under the hood
specifically for running lights/backup lights, so check your owner's
manual.
Your converter should work properly when switched on because it would
then be grounded through the 110v system to the outlet you are connected
to and not back to the trailer frame. Sounds like you are just going to
have to fish around in the tongue and walls and find a ground.
"Re-engineering" is always an option, but an unprotected wire is going to
give you trouble every time it is inconvienent!
Mike Howard
01 Saturn L200
97 Ford F-150 4x4
84 Coleman Sequoia
Mike Mason
side) back to the rear bumper area where they pop out thru the tube
frame at approx. the location of where the rear slide-out bed brace
attaches to the bolt for suppport. The blue brake wire pops out of
the frame just in front of the road side wheel.
The original pigtail on mine was sun-dried,cracked and broke at the
point where I could not reach the old wires to splice on some new, so
I decided to rewire with all new. I bought about 15' of a single 5/8"
black cable that has all 6 wires in it (found it at a big Truck Stop
on the Interstate, and I've seen it at some RV dealers). It proved
impossible for me to route new cable thru the tube like the original.
I fed the new cable thru the trailer tongue and drilled a hole to pull
it out at the face of the body, then ran it underneath exposed and
attched to the plywood floor. I did cut the cable to get to the blue
brake wire at the wheel and hooked the old brake wire to the new
cable...but as I mentioned in another thread, time and rust rendered
my brakes inoperable. There is a removable piece of plywood paneling
that provides access to the brake light wiring. I had to enlarge my
access hole to get to where I could remove the old dead power
converter and hook up the new brake light wires.
Mike in Austin
(77 Coleman Valley Forge)
Coleman77
OK, I will try to find the wire, if not, I will drill and tap a new
eyelet an wire to the frame going to the 7 blade connector. Bad
weather is supposed to be moving in, but I'll let you know what I find
out.
Karl