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[VAC] Re: Schematic for better trailer lights.



Cecil,
 While I agree with your philosophy in your wiring, there's an easier way:
 
An outfit called "Hoppy" makes various trailer lighting adaptors; one is an "Isolator". It's a solid-state device that functions much like your relays. You feed it with a single fuse or circuit breaker, it's triggered by the truck's lights (LT, RT, tail), and the output leads go to the trailer connector.
 
I used them on both of my '94 Dodge trucks and it worked out great. I prewired the 7-pin connector with 20+' of 7-conductor "trailer cable", ran that cable all the way to the front, under the hood. Installed the Hoppy Isolator under the hood on the 'new' truck, under the dash in the 'old' one. No heavy-duty flasher is required, and I don't need to worry about overloading the light switch or anything else in the truck. I used a seperate relay to feed the "charge" wire to the trailer, powering the coil from the ACC line, and fusing it seperately from the lighting. Another advantage to wiring like I do is the lack of any homebrew connections under the truck in the water and dirt.
 
On the 'new' truck, I used a terminal box from NAPA to make all the connections. It's the same size as the fuse box under the hood, so I mounted the terminal box to the lid of the fuse box with 4, 6-32 screws and nuts. Makes it real easy to trouble-shoot!
 
Although my NAPA store didn't have one of these things in stock at the time, they do now, so it must have a NAPA part #. I bought the second one from JC Whitney, the first from some outfit on the Web that I can no longer find. IIRC, it was about $60.00 from JC Whitney (http://www.jcwhitney.com). Remember that you want the "Lighting Isolator", not the "Adaptor". The latter is to adapt a tow vehicle with amber signals and seperate brake lights to feed a trailer with combined lights.
 
One of these days, I'll post pics.
 
                                                    <<Jim>>