Jeff What is the problem Mabye I can help
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Jeff What is the problem Mabye I can help
Joe-
The problem is that American Carriage tried to do a quick "get me out the door" wiring job as a courtesy for taking a trailer off their hands. There is......scratch that......was a converter added reley box in the engine bay that was inline between the gray electrical box in the engine bay and the wiring harness on the bus. This relay box has fuses inside that are not readily apparent until you unscrew the lid to reveal them. Two of the fueses were burnt / bad (the box did it's job when my wiring harness dragged the ground and shorted wires together). These guys weren't getting power at the wiring harness (due to the bad fueses that the didn't know were inside and neither did I) and in their haste they elected to bypass the box altogether and run wires directly into the grey electrical box. They didn't even check with me to approve this (I was right inside the coach). I began asking the right questions about how the extra load on the circuits from the trailer lights was going to affect the operation of my coach lights and when the realized I wasn't a complete door knob they said they would install their own relays in line. So now I've got extra plumbing that wasn't there before as if that box isn't confussing enough already.
The turn signals are on on the trailer in place of tail lights and a few of the coach breakers are tripping despite them saying that ran a seperate power source to the trailer instead of piggy backing on the existing fuses.
There is a wiring diagram of that whole mess inside the grey box but interpretting it and sorting it out is beyond my apptitute and I don't fully understand about the relay's they added. I thought surely that the owner here would be handy enough to tweak it, rearrange the wires , etc, etc. He only knows about HIS trailer that HE builds. I went to reinstall the box they bypassed (all the wiring is till there for this) but the nuts and studs that were holding the old wiring on began to break apart when I went to put fresh ends on the wires and attach them to the relay box.
If/when the guy shows up tommorow that the owner called and knows, he'll either have to fix the work that Dumb and Dumber started at American Coach or he'll decide if we should put it back the way it was which will either require mending this box the best we can to work or tracking something similar down on a Saturday (???).
Well For what its worth, When you are looking at the plug from the rear and if its that round 7 pin here is what it should be.
The top terminal is brake lights and should be a red wire from the bus.
The 2 terminals one on each side of it(1oclock and 11 oclock) are the marker lights and those wires should be brown and black.
The 2 terminals outside those (3 and 9 oclock) are the turn signals and should be green and yellow. The rest are spares.
If you have 12 volt accessories in the trlr they should be fed by the center terminal and that will be a larger guage white wire. Hope that is of some help.
Oh, 1 other thing, its grounded by the ball so when hooking up if goofy things are going on pull it around the lot and that will help the ground, usually.
Joe, Great explanation. One question...
7 pin connector
12 = Brakes, 11 and 1 position = markers, 5 and 7 = turn signals, 6 = ground (???) and center = accessory. (with the numbers = positions on a clock)
The only thing I was questioning was the 6 o'clock pin, should it be a heavy black ground wire ?? Is it different on these trailers ??
Standard as in the trucking world ??
Michael
Yes I think that might be correct. Im not sure though.
Also the 2 leads for markers will randomly split the power to the markers and tail lights so if you loose 1 youll still have markers and tail randomly. Some guys change that so that 1 is for tail lights and the other is clearance.
I like the random method because that way you never loose all of one or the other if one or the other fails.
I'm going to try to post the wiring diagram for this 9 pin connector. I'm told this is more in the trucking world than RV world.