Chevy Truck trailer lights

[john_bud]

Hi,

Was on the freeway yesterday and a buddy following pulls up and flashes a sign that my trailer lights are out. Pull over and diddle with the plug, no good. Go home and today got the fluke meter out. Checked the light fixture, bulb, trailer wires, plug, adaptor, truck plug, truck wires, truck connectors under the bed etc. Every thing was showing no signal on the stop / turn for the trailer and the truck is there happily blinking away.

Then I figure that the electrical connection for the trailer isn't T-ing in to the electrical connections for the truck. What? Sure enough, Chevy HD trucks have totally separate circuits from the fuse box back for the trailer (and each side too!) and a 10 amp fuse for the left side was out. 3 hours of fiddle faddling around and it was a fuse.

I guess it's a good design. A bad connection will only take out one portion of the lights.

But, it would have been much quicker had I known from the start!!!

jb

 

[crbr]

Hi,

Was on the freeway yesterday and a buddy following pulls up and flashes a sign that my trailer lights are out. Pull over and diddle with the plug, no good. Go home and today got the fluke meter out. Checked the light fixture, bulb, trailer wires, plug, adaptor, truck plug, truck wires, truck connectors under the bed etc. Every thing was showing no signal on the stop / turn for the trailer and the truck is there happily blinking away.

Then I figure that the electrical connection for the trailer isn't T-ing in to the electrical connections for the truck. What? Sure enough, Chevy HD trucks have totally separate circuits from the fuse box back for the trailer (and each side too!) and a 10 amp fuse for the left side was out. 3 hours of fiddle faddling around and it was a fuse.

I guess it's a good design. A bad connection will only take out one portion of the lights.

But, it would have been much quicker had I known from the start!!!

jb

Trailer fuses are in three different places. Look at your manual closely. Just went through that myself.

 

[Ryan03]

Ford fulsize trucks have been wired in a similar fashion also since 1998 or so. I found out the hard way when I was towing my chevelle back from Norwalk Raceway park at about 3 in the morning on my crappy old open trailer with my former truck, a 99 F-350 SD, which was about 3 monthes old at the time. An Ohio state trooper pulled me over to let me know that I had no running lights on the trailer. It took me about 20 min. under the watchful eye of Ohio`s finest to figure out that there were seperate fuses under the hood for all the trailer lights. At least GM. improved upon Fords design by actualy labeling what the fuse does on the bottom of the fuse box lid, as opposed to fords crappy system of only giving you a number on the lid for the fuse, which you must then cross reference in the owners manual. When faced with one of these Fords, I will typicaly just get out a diode test light, and check both tabs on the top of each fuse until I find a blown one. It is much quicker than going through the owners manual to find the appropriate fuse location. I now also own an HD Chev.

 

[radioman]

yeah - my chevy blazer is the same way too. i learned the hard way that trailer fuses is different from the regular fuses as well. after couple hours of troubleshooting!! never again ill dismiss a simple thing

 

[john_bud]

Yeah, the thought process is good to have separate fuses for each. And I probably actually read about it at one time, but I am suffering from the affects of what my doctor called "Ordinary Longevity Disorder". It's a degenerative deal that gets worse every year.


jb




By the way, the acronym is OLD --> get it?