Trailer lights

[2stroke]

As dumb as it is with an adapter being about $25, I am trying to splice into the trailer wire harness. I can easily go off the tail lights, but that makes the trailer blink weird. I have identified which wire does what, but I cant figure out exactly how to splice into them. I got the blinkers to work fine, and either the tail lights or brake lights. I cant figure out how to put both the tail lights and brake lights through one wire (green right blinker, yellow left blinker, brown both brake/tail, and white ground). I figured there was a relay somewhere on the truck, but there either isn't, or I need to figure out how to engage it. There are 6 wires and 5 of them are used. Is the 6th one the 12v side of the relay? I don't have any relays on hand, otherwise I would have already figured it out. There has to be a way to make it work, else what does the adapter do? Does it have some kind of relay inside it to make it work?

 

[Anime]

$25?

They are $1.21 for the Standard Motor Products TC422 one or $8.34 for the Hopkins 40305 on Rockauto PLUS you can use a coupon code for another whopping 5% off.

Link to trailer connectors for 1994 Explorer on Rockauto: http://www.rockauto.com/catalog/x,carcode,1119631,parttype,2628,a,Ad+Code+www.google.com+

First Class Mail shipping is about $3 for one connector, Priority Mail shipping is about $6 for two.

Under 5 bucks and you don't have to deal with the headache.

Also, I think the Standard Motor Products one is just a Hopkins product in a Standard Motor Parts package. Probably not worth paying 8x more for.



I've spliced into the wiring and got it to work with a 5-flat plug and adapters for a few trailers, but when a 4-flat plug became the standard it didn't seem to work well, if at all.

I've patched up the splices and now have the trailer connector. It's worth the money in a lot of ways, not the least of which is safety. I haven't taken it apart to look inside, but it may have some electrical components that cause it to work better versus splicing directly into the wiring.

 

[2stroke]

I should mention its for a Mazda B4000, and the cheapest one rockauto listed is $20. Even the 5 to 4 adapter is $16.

 

[2stroke]

Well I can get a $4 relay and with a little work, have it work, or $20 plus shipping I can plug in and forget it. I'm not sure which way I will go. All I would do is hook both brake and tail lights into the trailer plug. Then I would run the tail lights through normally closed contacts on the relay, and connect the relay to the brake petal switch.

 

[2stroke]

Well I found a relay to try, and wouldn't you know, it doesn't work. The relay works, but there is some other relay in the truck that I can't find. When I hit the brakes with the tail lights on, it latches on the circuit. There are two more wires on the trailer harness, a black, and a black with pink stripe. I wonder if those are 12v and 0v wires for the relay I cant seem to find. If some one could at least tell me what those wires do, it would help me out a lot. Just guessing doesn't seem to be working, as unlikely as that sounds.