Wiring harness

[jthorstad]

Howdy! I have a 97 Explorer that seems to have come with a factory wiring harness. I recently bought a boat and rewired the trailer with brand new lights.

The lighting schematic color codes matched identically to what my wiring harness labels show (I can see it when I remove the rear left lighting panel).

However, the lights don't work right. I can't remember exactly what they do, but it was something like...pressing the brake would turn on the right trailer taillight...turning on the right blinker would flash both trailer lights...crazy stuff like that.

BTW, I did "bypass" the factory wiring harness (spliced the harnesswiring right into the brake, tail and signal light wiring), but I suspect something is wrong with the way it's wired. I thought it would be a piece of cake since the wiring scheme for the trailer matched perfectly with the Explorer (brown to left signal, green to right signal, etc.)

Has anyone seen a similar problem and know what to do? I mentioned it to a buddy who "knows of such things", and his comment was "if you have yellow blinkers, it won't work". I didn't have time to ask what he meant by that.

TIA for any help...

Jesse

 

[Crankcase]

Ah yes. Because you have independant turn signals(Yellow) ones, you need a little box from a parts store that splits up the leads into two wires.

Kind of hard to explain, just go into a store and ask for a trailer light adapter for independant turn signals.

Also, make sure the colors are correct. Just because they are the same color, doesn't meen they really do the same thing.

 

[paul_c_nicols]

why are you not using the factory wiring harness? someone can correct me on this, but i believe ford has already split the wires for the yellow taillight issue.

i had the same problem on my 2000 x. i went to uhaul to buy the little conversion box. if my memory serves me, it was $80!

needless to say...brake & parkers work, but i take my chances on turns! too complicated and too expensive to fix for my very in-frequent towing!

 

[mrboyle]

If you crawl under your X on the driver's side rear corner there is a connector hanging down. This is the factory installed tap for installing trailer wireing. Splice your pigtail into that connector and you will not need to spend any money on any special adaptor. Also, the standard color code for trailer wireing is: Brown= tail lights, Green= right turn/brake, Yellow= left turn/brake and white= ground.