This
may sound stupid but I haven't done this before and was looking for
tips on feeding the new wires through..
If there's enough of the old wires left, you can use them as pulls for
the new wires. Of course, fishtape also works. The whole inside of the
channels is open so it can rot quickly from the inside out, forcing you
to buy another piece of crap trailer, the whole idea. My Shorelander
lasted 3 seasons and was eaten, in spite of my constant flushing it
INSIDE and out with fresh water each time I returned home. It was eaten
by the salt while we were boating and it sat, fizzing away, in the public
parking lot at the ramp where you couldn't flush it out. Shorelander
engineers did a wonderful job making it last just past the payment book.
Also for wiring the two side
fender lights (front fender yellow and rear fender red).
As the wires to the sidelights weren't waterproofed inside the flooding-
every-time-it-went-under channels, those connections rotted away inside
the channel the fastest. You can fake them all out by putting the wires
on the OUTSIDE of the channel where you can get to the connections to
glop on the RTV to all the connections to seal out the water. Of course,
the sidelights are especially designed to allow water penetration into
the bent pieces of scrap metal contacts the bulb sort of leans against,
to insure they rot before the frame. There are LED sidelights to replace
them, price about the same as a Lexus computer-controlled headlight
system, at your local boat shop. You pay $3/year and replace them or $60
for 3 years when you toss the trailer into the trash because you're
afraid it'll collapse from the rusted frame on the way to the
landing....a lose-lose situation..(c;
In addtion
think I should switch to LED lights? I feel that i replace my regular
trailer lights every year because of corrosion...
LED lights are great. SEALED LED lights are even greater! Just because
they mount the amazingly-fragile LED circuit boards inside a piece of
plastic DOESN'T mean they are submersible! I've seen them with the wires
going through a hole big enough to house an ant farm inside! Look
closely for the words GUARANTEED SUBMERSIBLE, not just "water repellant",
whatever that means in legalspeak. Make sure you can take your Lexus LED
lights off the rotten trailer and put them on the new one 3 years from
now, after the springs rot off it. They'll probably still work,
probably.
To give you an idea about the awful price gouging on LEDs, superbright
LEDs used in these lights are about 3.2c/each if you buy 100 lot ($3.20).
I found some white ones that one LED rivals a backup light for $1.12/each
on the net. Really bright LEDs are really CHEAP, now. So, why does 8 of
them soldered to a piece of PC board cost $80/pair? "Price gouging"...
I put a pair of standard SAE round LED stop/tail lights on my work
stepvan. They came from a fleet stepvan parts house I like to deal with.
Look on:
http://www.rustrepair.com/app2/onlinecat.htm?r=sv&p=wi-lamp
at lamp D. $17, complete. Mill Supply's service is impeccable and that
lamp is SEALED. The ones in my rear bumper are exposed, completely, to
the spray off the rear duallys and have worked perfectly for a couple
years now. Compare $17 to $80 at your boatshop ripoff artists. The long
ones fit many boat trailers, another standardized size stepvan
manufacturers love. They have 3 wires...ground, tail, turn/brake. The
same LEDs light for everything. When 12V is applied to the turn/brake
wire, the LEDs come on full brightness. When 12V is applied to the tail
wire, a circuit inside the light pulses the LEDs at a 50% duty cycle very
rapidly and it makes them LOOK dim to the eye. You can see the strobing
if you move your eyes rapidly around not looking at them. They are 3
times as bright and INSTANTLY on, not after the bulb warms up, alerting
the idiot hugging your bumper he might have to back off or crash like the
other 3 idiots the truck has broken the grill and radiator out of with
its pintle hook trailer hitch...(c;
Love the LED lights, myself. At 3c/each for LEDs, why is Detroit and the
Japs/Koreans still hugging to the bulbs like they depend on them? Are
they that cheap?!
Get Mill Supply, the stepvan place, to send you the catalogs. The 20,000
Btu hot water heater under my stepvan workbench would sure make a dandy
cabin heater in a lot of boats, if you don't tell the yachties where it
came from...(c;
