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rich rich is offline
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First recorded activity by BoatBanter: Jul 2006
Posts: 8
Default need help re trailer lighting

Well, I thought I had it figured out. Today I went to the boat and switched
the red/black wiring. STILL no parking lights. Next time I go to the boat,
I am going to switch out both bulbs..... who knows.. maybe both of the
Parking filaments went out at nearly the same time, though both filaments
appear fine..I haven't put a meter across them yet... RG


"rich" wrote in message
. ..
Please help me if you can. If I understood the internal workings of a 1157
bulb..I'd feel better about this issue..

I have a trailer with .....wired ground leads with white wire ground to
the lights individually (I moved my trailer lights to the top of PVC
uprights, and since PVC doesn't carry electricity, I added separate wired
grounds).. That part seems to work OK since I have working stop and turn
lights on both sides. I don't have parking lights.... Yellow and brown
to one side, green and brown to the other side... All SHOULD work
normally.

The replacement rear light has.... RED and BLACK wires coming out of it.
It IS designed for stop/parking/turn operation. I added a white ground
wire to the base of each unit and connected that back to the white wire
ground from the wire harness. . I ASSUMED that the BLACK wire would
match the BROWN wire and I wired accordingly... My issue is the lack of
parking lights.

After thinking about things for a while, I wondered if the BLACK should
be connected to the green or yellow wire .... and the RED wire should be
attached to the BROWN lead???

A little further confusing thoughts...that the colors, by themselves,
shouldn't mean anything...one filament should be on "all of the time" (
when the parking lights are set to ON)..and the other filament should be
on/off based on input from the relay on the left or right sides.

Why, then, doesn't the "wrong" connected filament at least "glow" when I
may have mistakenly reversed the wiring??? I then wondered if the
filament on the BRAKE/TURN INDICATOR side is so much bigger..that it
doesn't reflect any "glow" even though current is flowing to it..

I'm puzzled. I hope the above description comes close to explaining the
issues and my thoughts about them...Thanks for any observations and or
help.

p.s I know I could just switch the two leads and I probably will do that
the next time I go to the boat...but the issue of a non-glowing filament
on ...even the wrong side... still puzzles me.
thanks, RichG TX/IL