Bargman #99 Tailight refit 6-prong to 7-prong

[silverkeeper]

I am refitting my 1960 Safari from a 6 prong fitting to a 7 prong ucord.
The original wiring had the black wire going to the stop (brake) light.
With the new set up the red and brown combine Stop and turn.
Question: Can I connect the black to the red at the light and will they function properly?

Thanks,

Rick

[Jammer]

Welcome to the forums.

Are you sure the stop wire is for lights? Usually it's for the electric brakes.

I don't think I've seen an Airstream that has stop lights separate from the turn signals.

[markdoane]

The early airstreams have separate circuits for the stop lights and the turn signals. Don't connect the black wire to the red.

[silverkeeper]

Yes the black is for the stop lights. Its printed on the warranty mounted in the closet.
The question is how do I split the current coming from the TV ucord?

Thanks for your reply.

[markdoane]

In the early 50's there were still lots of vehicles that were wired with a separate brake light circuit. Those became obsolete as more and more car makers adopted the dual-filament combined brake and turn signal wiring method.

The original brake controllers also had a separate brake light wire so that when you manually activated the brakes, the trailer brakes would light up to warn following vehicles.

Nowdays with modern brake controllers and pre-wired connectors for most tow vehicles, there is no need for the separate wire. If you manually activate the trailer brakes on your Ford, Chevy, Dodge or Toyota, it automatically light up the appropriate lamps in both your tow vehicle and trailer.

So if you want to you can re-purpose the original black wire in your 6-way harness as either a 12V charge line (early Airstreams had a 12V charge and ground line that was separate from the 6-way) or you can add back-up lights. Be sure to use appropriate wire sizes and fuses or circuit breakers.

The 99 had two bulbs. One was a single filament powered by the running light circuit, the other was a dual filament powered by the turn signal and the brake signal.

You can leave the running lights hooked up to the lower single filament bulb, and just combine both wires from the dual filament bulb to the single combined brake/turn signal wire from your 7-way harness.

Or you could convert the tail-lights to a LED type brake/turn signal. There are several threads that discuss how to do this.

Here is the original wiring schematic.

[TG Twinkie]

Are there dual filament bulbs in any of the rear light fixtures? If so; I would wire what are now the stop lights to the tail light wire (green); then wire one of the dual filament bulbs in the other fixture for turn signals (left red and right brown) and the other to the tail lights (green).
You could also wire what are now the brake lights ( black wire)to the electric brake circuit; When you apply the brakes the lights would come on. Then just wire the red (left turn) and brown (right turn) and green to the tail lights.

[silverkeeper]

Thanks so much for he info.
Yes there are dual filament bulbs in the lights.
I did take apart the old 6 prong plug and found that it was connected with three wires, they cut the black out and seems to have connected the red line from the ucord to the red and black lines that leads back to the tail lights. At that location another black splits off to feed into the right tail light.

I'll look into both of your options and see what works.

I have been reading up on all your input to lucymcdog and her trailer.
Mine is very similar but perhaps the wiring is in better shape.
Just finished gutting the interior and replacing the whole floor, refit the black water tank and am going through and bench testing the rest of the stuff to see if it works, (have a little air compressor for the water tank that works great, and the original water heater if in fine shape) so far so good. The trailer was moth bald in the desert for twenty of its years, so it was in pretty good condition and no rust on the frame just a lot of fine dirt in everything!

Will post photos when I figure how to do that.

Best to you and thanks again,

Rick