Dang Trailer wiring

if it's a "Carry-on" brand trailer, replace all the lights. dunno where they get them, but they don't last long for some reason.

i test with a battery charger... GRound the charger lead to the white ground wire... Then take your RED lead and touch the BROWN wire and you should get tail lights.. You can also take off the lense of the lights and test right at the socket... Touch the RED to the green or yellow and you will get the BRAKE/ TURN light on left or right.

Many years ago I bought a new 16 foot tandem axel landscapers type trailer. It had brakes on both axels with a 12 volt lantern size battery with a break away switch. After using it 

What I do is buy a few sets that hang on by magnets when on sale for $9.99 at HF. Keep some parts around from broken ones or if too much to repair slap a new one on in 5 minutes. Cleaning up property with tall grass, weeds and other unseen hazards is my thing and can't keep lights working when ran under the trailer.

Tom...if you are gonna replace the wiring, slide the wires throught an old garden hose and zip tie the hose up under the trailer, i've done that to a couple of mine and it works well to keep stuff from yanking the wires loose like what Gary says. and keeps mice and weather off the wires too.

jaybmiller wrote: no lights = no ground or ALL bulbs gone(in your case SIX bulbs !!). let us know if ALL bulbs were blown..that's kinda rare to happen, though a huge voltgae surge could take them out I suspect  bad ground. wish I could be there...I like problems like this....

I had to run the ground wire all the way to the neg. post of the truck battery on mine to make them work. ----they work fine when hooked to the explorer, but not when hooked to the truck. (damn diesel fords)

Tom, do yourself a favor and start over. Every trailer manufacturer I've ever seen doesn't use sealed connections so corrosion runs rampant. With new wire, solder all connections and seal them with heatshrink tubing. With everything soldered and sealed, your lights will work every time you hook up to the trailer.

Shameless, I've tried the wires run inside various hoses and lines several times with no success. I buy repo properties where no human other than vandals have been on in a few years.

Common problem with the current production trailers and have seen such with the last thirty years of small trailer production is they rely on speed to keep pricing down. Scotch Lock fasteners instead of solid crimps and heat shrinked connections or even fabricated no seam harness as opposed to the excessively sliced crap put out there. Every trailer I have had required re-wiring within two years and not due to incidental damage, lamps were junk $.50-$few dollar apiece garbage from day one as again, to make the price more appealing the production materials had to be cheapened. NONE of my current trailers have any OEM Lamps on them. Five wires from a four prong plug is nothing new, used to be furnished that way in bulk plug/harness assemblies. I prefer 6 wire small round pin plugs and wiring to the code values as set by the manufacturers of small trailers/RV Trailers, my large trailer has a 7 pin flat connector plug that was crap from day one and may change it over to 6 pin small round.