Let There Be Lights

After putting goo all around the floor patch and the four lift post corners, I decided it was time to tackle the lights.  I removed the tail lights and discovered that the seals were all ruined and they pretty much fell apart once off of the trailer.  I decided to get new tail lights.  A quick trip and $20 less in my pocket later and I had a new set of tail lights.  They came with a wiring harness too so the previous wiring kit I had bought was unnecessary.  That 20 bucks may as well have been set on fire.

Anyway, I got the old lights off, cleaned up the camper skin where the lights attached, ran the wires underneath the camper and hooked it all up.  I backed Bluebell up to the camper close enough so I could attach the wires.  I did NOT actually hook Frostbite up to Bluebell's hitch.  There was a slight problem with this which I covered in a previous post.

Once everything was hooked up, I tested it out and . . .

nothing.

Not even a flicker.

I tried to simplify the problem.  I got out the other wiring kit and connected the lights to the new kit without going through the trailer.

nothing.

I got the old wires out of the trash, trimmed the wires to just a foot past the connector to Bluebell.

nothing.

Stumped. I did a redneck move and chose a green wire and brown wire and touched it with my tounge.

YES.  There was a charge going through.

I hooked those green and brown wires up to a taillight in my lap.

nothing.

At this point it was getting dark so I put everything up for the night and decided to start fresh on Sunday.  That night I called my father and sought out his advice.  I explained my failures and he suggested that the lack of light simply means that the circuit is not complete.  We talked about the white ground wire and how I had attached it to the chain on the tounge.  My father suggested that the ground had to flow from the battery to the light itself and this could be done via the hitch connection meaning that Bluebell had to actually be hooked to Frostbite to make the correct ground circuit.  It made sense to me.

The next day, I decided to cheat a bit initially and try a new wire connecting Bluebell's hitch to Frostbite's tounge.  I though I would try this first since I would have to take up the stablizers and lower Frostbite to actually hook it up to the hitch.  Anyway, I fired it up and BAM!  There was light.  The brakes worked and the blinker's worked!

I ran the wires underneath Frostbite and into the back of the camper and attached the new tail lights to the back.

Everything worked.  I think it is an improvement visually especially since the left blinker wasn't working at all before with the old lights.

Before

After

I've still have the side lights to splice in.  There are 2 in the front and 2 in the back.  Running lights are also a problem.  Bluebell is one of those new vehicles where the headlights are on all the time.  It has a light sensor on them that make the lights brighter when it gets dark.  We've noticed a problem with the lights the past few months in that the inside dash lights don't work well and I couldn't get the fog lights to work either.  I suspect problems in Bluebell that will require that I take it to CarMax to fix.  It's all under an extended warranty so fixing it will just be 50 bucks.  I'm crossing my fingers that the running lights will start working on Frostbite when this problem is fixed.