Friend Let The Smoke Out...Help!

I let a �friend� use my trailer and he set the Bulldog jack on the 7 pin RV electrical connector (male end) and crushed it. He then went to the store and purchases a new male end and wired it up without telling me.

I hooked it up to my truck to take it home, and while checking the lights somehow let all the smoke out of the wiring harness from the male connector to the wiring under the tongue. Blue lead �seems� to be the only one a little melted. I bypassed the �brake away� switch from the blue lead to help diagnose the problem. He assured me he had the wires correctly connected, but now the elec brakes don�t work.

Near as I can tell, he hooked the blue brake power lead to the ground and both ground (brake and light) wires to the power. I got the lights to work, but my Tekonsha Prodigy isn�t showing the brakes being connected to the trailer. Trailer (NEW last month) is fully loaded and sitting in a field quite a ways from the shop. One (?!?) wheel is locked.

What is my best way to track the wiring? Pulling the tires off will be a REAL pain where the trailer is located.

Ideas? Theories? ALL help is appreciated!

Scott

Coldiron,

Yep, good ol' North Idaho!

I'd bet you are down around Spirit or Athol? I hope they catch the guy who took his 12 year old daughter "camping" and hang him by his nads.

I appreciate the offer, but the trailer is 15 miles east of Bonners in a field past Moyie. I'm almost to the point of telling my "friend" to get his crap unloaded, get the trailer fixed correctly and deliver it to me in Sagle, but that wouldn't quite be neighborly. He's already sweating it pretty good, but I'll take whatever info I can get from this board and work on getting it out of there.

Scott in ugly, disgusting, flat worthless North Idaho

After the plug got crushed, my pal didn't look at the old hookup just hooked the harness wiring into the corresponding color lugs (W=W, BL=BL etc). This is what caused the melt down.

You'd think an 8 grand trailer would use the standard wiring wouldn't you? (grin).

Scott

If the brakes are set without the plug connected to the tow vechile, then the breakaway cable has been set (pulled) applying voltage to the brakes as if the trailer became disconnected under tow.

Reset the breakaway then double check the wiring on the male end. On most covers have a wiring schemitic on the dust cover showing the correct wiring. It's easy on the male end to wire it upside down if one was not watching the locater pin.

T_Bone

I bypassed the breakaway switch while trying to figure out where my buddy went wrong with the wiring, but it didn't help.

as I mentioned to Hermit, he had wired the male plug almost exactly opposite from the original wiring. Maybe if I had rotated the plug 180 from the pin I wouldn't have this problem!

Scott

then tow it somewhere to be worked on, open up the wire harness and look for fused/melted wires as far back as possible, replace/splice wires. Do a search in Google for '7 pin trailer connector' you will have the correct pin diagrams.

good luck.

The wheel is locked up with no power whatsoever. Is it possible that the brake welded itself in the closed position?

I'm going to try to remove the locked wheel and tow it to an easier place to work on it.

The easiest thing would be to roll the trailer over and check all the wiring, but he's got an old non-running 2N Ford with implements loaded on it and it would be a bear to unload it. I'm just not comfortable dragging the loaded trailer 50 miles or so with one wheel!

Scott

• Here is the plug site

Thanks for the link!

I printed out the page to take with me and saved the link to my tractor favorites file.

If I have to rewire the whole trailer, you can bet I'll hook it up by color correctly so I don't have problems later!

Scott