Clearance Lights, Again

[Merlin]

The clearance lights on my 16TBS are working again, for now.  Electrical issues have been a nemesis for the camper and this is the second repair of the clearance lights in the last couple of years. The basic problem with them is the cheap clamp-type electrical connectors LL used throughout the trailer. They don't make very good contact to begin with and are very susceptible to corrosion when they get wet. Many, many boat trailers out there have failed lights because of corroded clamp-type connections. I use only crimp-type heat-shrink connectors as replacement.

This time around I made myself a light test set up with a vehicle-side plug having individual circuit (tail lights, turn signals, brake power, etc.) connectors. I can connect each circuit I want to test to the positive lead going separately to a battery. That allows me to check lights and brakes without have to hook up the tow vehicle and risk blowing its fuses or damaging the trailer controller if (when) something isn't right.

Using my tester, I was eventually able to determine the ground wire going up the wall to the upper clearance lights had a bad connector. That sentence was easy to write, but took a good 2 hours of testing to find. The fix was to replace the wire/connector, but I could not figure out anyway to get to it. It enters the wall from the floor under the shower pan and exits the wall in the wire raceway inside the shower on the driver's side. I remember a rat's nest of wiring under the shower pan when I had to remove that some time ago to repair the drain misalignment.

I was faced with 2 options; one was to run a new ground wire outside the camper from the rear bumper to the upper clearance lights and go inside under an existing light up top. That would have been hard to fasten securely to the camper. The other was to simply use the camper frame as a ground for the upper lights. Although I know it's not always a good solution to use the frame as ground, I was able to get a good ground with a ring connector, star washer, and 10 AWG wire using plenty of anti-oxidant compound. The lights now work fine and I think will continue to work until the next clamp-type connector gives up somewhere. 

The photos are of my tester (not much of a looker, but it works) and of the wiring in the rear bumper I had to access to find and test the clearance light circuit.

[MikeT]

Thanks for the info.  I'm still working through my lights as well.  Did you have to replace the lights or did they start working once you resolved the ground?  My lights are actually burned out.  I have 12.8 volts present and have just wired my rear view camera to the top centre clearance light.  Seems to be working fine but I am worried that there could be intermittent shorting that will fry the voyager camera (that would be costly!)  I'll test the camera tonight with a little drive to see if the connection remains strong.  I'm a little pissed at the wiring. Missing grommets to protect the wiring, poor sealing ( I just had to fix the porch light as it was full of water and fried the LED circuit board.  Some of my clearance lights have 6 diodes, most have 2 and in some cases 1 diode is out.  I expected better from Livin Lite.  I'm a little reluctanct to replace the lights with the Optronix brand as the quality seems poor.  If you replaced yours, what brand did you purchase?

Mike

[Merlin]

The inaccessible ground wire connector was the problem and once I got around that, the lights worked ok. In the past I've had to replace 2 clearance lights that were not sealed and had water damage. This is what I used and they come in either red or amber.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00E8KI2CG/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

And, yes, the electrical aspect of my LL Camplite was dismal. I've upgraded and repaired and still feel like I'm running "on a wing and prayer" because of all the jagged openings and clamp connectors. I had attributed it to the fact that when ours was made, they were still in multiple buildings and were in the process of moving. QA/QC was pretty bad right then.

You're wise to make sure there is no intermittent connection to the camera. It would not be happy about that.