[VAC] Re: ail lights

["Weimers" <mweimer@xxxxxxxx>]

Since there is some discussion of tail lights going on, it reminded me of
something I was thinking about last summer. I've seen vehicles lately with
LED lamps for tail lights. I've seen tractor-trailers with these lights.
I've also seen some U-Haul trailers, some traffic signals, and I think the
new Cadillac uses them too. What I've noticed about them is that they come
on brightly and instantaneously. I really don't know anything about them
except that I've seen them.

Over the years, I've had many occasions where the tow car wasn't getting
enough voltage to the tail lamps for them to light up very well. One of the
reasons why the reverse lamps are not all that effective .....they just are
not getting full voltage. By the time the volts get from my car's battery to
my trailer tail lamps, they've gone through several connectors, a fuse, a
switch, plus unknown connectors and wires in the walls of the Airstream
...maybe 50 feet of wire. There's got to be some loss ....I KNOW there's
some loss! I have noticed that when I had a battery at the back of the
trailer testing the lamps, they light up a lot brighter than they do when
the tow car is running them.

I'm wondering if those LED lamps are lower wattage so they wouldn't need as
much current to run them. Could they be fitted into an Airstream tail lamp,
and would they be worth the effort? Does anyone know something about them?

And if LED's are no good:

Another way to get the tail lamps (including the reverse lamps) brighter
would be to get them more voltage. Former VAC president Stan Baston was
showing me his system of relays he uses to get more voltage to his trailer.
The relays are on the back of his Suburban and using a power wire directly
from his battery, provide full voltage to his trailer connector.

In order to address the voltage loss thru the trailer connectors I was
thinking about putting the relays inside the trailer (there's nice space
against the front wall "behind" the front sofa). This way the car only needs
to provide a minimal amount of current to the trailer and to the relays, the
trailer's 12 volt system would then provide the voltage to the trailer
lights. Actually, the 12 volts would come from the large "hot" wire which
would be connected to both the trailer battery AND the car battery
(hopefully getting about 13.5 volts while the engine is running). This would
take a lot of strain off the car's lighting system, and make the trailer
lights brighter also.

I'm pretty sure this will work well because when I was rewiring my
car-to-trailer-wire connector into the front wall of my '71 GT, I wasn't
sure of one wire  ....so I shorted that wire to the hot wire ("hot" from the
trailer battery only). It was the reverse lamp wire as I suspected it was,
but I was amazed at how bright the reverse lamps were!  I've never seen them
that bright when they are getting power from the car. I guess the reverse
lamp circuit in my car is a little weak. I doubt it was ever meant to be
added too.

MARC WEIMER
Punxsutawney, PA  -  Home of the Groundhog
#15767
1963 Globe Trotter
1971 Globe Trotter
http://users.penn.com/~mweimer/weimer.html