Trailer light question - opinions needed

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watson524

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Joined
Mar 24, 2008
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29669
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322
Hi all,

For longer than I can remember, our trailer lights have been goofy and I'm sick of it so I'm planning to get a kit and redo the whole thing. While I'm likely to have questions while I'm doing it (mainly on the ground which I have always thought is the problem), before I get going, I wanted to get opinions on two things:
1.) LED or incandescent? We are in the slip almost the whole season other than a pull or two to wash it so I am thinking LED might be overkill but not sure.
2.) Brands. Wesbar and Optronics seem to be the most popular and I see boatfix.com sells both. Any opinions?

thanks in advance!
 
Try running a ground return from all the lights to the front of the trailer and have the master connection there. dont rely on the gal. steel to supply the ground for the system.
 
You mean prior to ripping the world out? It's interesting... when I look at the line going into the trailer, there's 5 wires (no brakes) at my connector that goes to the truck wiring. yellow, green, and 2 blacks. B and Y down one side, B and G down the other. But out of the flat connector is a white ground that goes to where the ball hitch bolts on to the trailer tongue. Seems like that's just passing the ground through the connector from the truck to the frame but doesn't carry back to each of the lights. THEN on my orange side markers, I seem to think they have both wires going to it in a wire nut (2 wires from frame to one from side market) and then back down to the rear lights. Seems weird since only one wire should splice there. THEN at the back driver side, I see a white wire from the tail light area to under the nut where the license plate holder comes on to but that only happens on the one side. So it's like they tried to ground the one light but I don't know where the other end of that white wire is.

Given all this screwiness, I figured I'd just start clean so I know what's what. But regardless of whether I go new or not, I'll take your advice and ground all the lights back to the front. I could connect tail light and side marker grounds together right so I only have 2 coming forward vs 4? Plus I'm over 80" so I have the rear center which I guess just one ground wire will suffice for? And on the tail lights, which wire do you ground since those have 2 wires going to them?

thanks!
 
I was told that the new LEDs have no reflective property's so the DMV is pulling guys over with any kinda trailers with LEDs and giving out tickets for having no reflectors. If your using LEDs you must have at least the size of a typical trailer light .... that reflects.

You can use reflective tape but they prefer 2 red reflectors one on each side facing back and then 2 more red reflectors on each side toward the rear as far back as you can to complete a reflective corner.

Right now around here they are targeting landscape trailers and some boats but the tickets are for real.

Just passing info along, I think the LEDs are cool looking btw
 
Volffas - thanks for that link. I actually had come across that a few months ago when I was thinking about doing this but didn't bookmark it so I'm glad you posted.

JLC - that's interesting about the LEDs. We already have stick on red and amber reflectors on the trailer but is it the light housing themselves they say should be reflective?
 
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