1988 Running Light Exposed Wire

[vhariable]

I had a short in the running lights of my 1988 Excella. I was already planning on replacing with new LEDs since the existing were fairly well deteriorated. While cleaning up the surface after removing all of the old lights I discovered the location of the short! The attached picture shows the curb side top-corner running light mount and wires. I had noticed there was some interesting corrosion around the mounting bracket and then looked more closely at the positive wire and noticed some bubbling of the wire cover. I pulled at the wire and there as you see in the attached image is a lot of exposed wiring! What you see is as far as I could pull it out and I can see in the hole that the wire is still bad further in.

Does anyone have a wiring diagram for my trailer? Any ideas on how to fix this issue. The trailer is in otherwise excellent condition and I would hate to have to crack open the walls. Any way I could solder on a new wire and fish out the old?

Thank you for any advise!

[Wsmith]

Sure! Take the bezel off the trailer. There is probably a few inches of excess wire inside. You could just pull on it but until you know the condition behind the fixture I would remove it and look. You can either splice the wire and leave it behind the light or pull out a couple of inches so you can wire nut to it.

When installing a wire not turn the nut clockwise until it twist the second wire around the main wire about two times and it will be tight enough. I would then go buy some scotch 130 tape (rubber tape and wrap it all up stretching the tape, follow up with at least three full wraps of scotch 33 or 88 tape. There is also a

Teflon

tape that can be used as a first wrap.

This will give you a better longer lasting connection than a crimped connection unless you have a set of calibrated

crimper

handy.

[vhariable]

Thank you for the tip. I removed the bezel and pulled the wire out as far as I could. The wire was bad right up to where I could pull it out and there is a crimp connection just beyond that. I soldered on to the good part of the wire and heat wrapped the joint. No more short or loss of power! I really didn't think I could pull out anymore wire, but removing the bezel helped gain another 3/4" of wire.