Did you wire up your tire trailer? (i.e. to the car)
05-29-2006, 07:14 PM
#1
Le Mans Master
Thread Starter
Did you wire up your tire trailer? (i.e. to the car)
You guys with tire trailers, did you wire up the car to connect to the trailer or no?
I imagine even with the small size that it is required by DOT - no reason for unnecessary tickets.
if so, anyone have a diagram handy on where to splice and which wires are which?
or am I being to **** here?
Thanks!
Jon
I imagine even with the small size that it is required by DOT - no reason for unnecessary tickets.
if so, anyone have a diagram handy on where to splice and which wires are which?
or am I being to **** here?
Thanks!
Jon
05-29-2006, 11:13 PM
#4
Burning Brakes
You'll definitely want to wire it up, especially for hours of darkness.
It looks like you have a C5 and mine is a C6, but both pretty similar. Get a flat four coupler with wires from a parts store that matches your flat four on the trailer. (U-haul and Westbar fit slightly differently, but they are compatible.)
White Wire: Ground. Probably the most important wire of the 4 because if you don't have a good ground your signals may be weak or non-existant. Bolt the end to a good, solid ground. I found one around the internal latch for the hatch. It also helps to have the trailer on the hitch ball as that helps give some grounding effect also.
Brown wire: Running lights. Each tail light on the trailer has a brown wire going to it to operate the running lights whenever your parking lights or headlights are on. This also operates the side marker running lights on the trailer. Find a brown wire inside the rear panel of the Vette that goes to your car's rear lighting. Remove the rear panel to access the tail lights on the car and my C6 had the bundle of wires coming into the passenger side rear light and then from there the left side got the wires from the right side. So I tapped into the brown wire over there and with a good ground your running lights should work with your parking lights on.
Yellow wire: Left turn signal and left brake light. There should be only one yellow wire ... a razor blade can strip off 1/2" of plastic coating and you can hook your pig tail yellow wire up to that with enough electrical tape to ensure no loose stray wires will touch another stray, bare wire.
Green wire: Right turn signal and right brake light. Same procedure here. Except on my C6 there were a couple of "greenish" wires. I guessed wrong the 1st time and went to a "blue-green" wire and that was the right one. One trick is you can often avoid stripping the plastic coating off the (wrong) wire by first using a safety pin or one of those pins that comes in a new dress shirt ... stick it through the coating and hook a lead on to it and test it first before stripping.
With the ignition ON have someone operate the headlights, turn signals & brakes (or you can depress the brake with a broom wedged against the seatback if no one is around).
My son has a C5 and he found a trick little access hole from inside to feed the pig tail through the panel just above the license plate. So when he's not using the trailer he stuffs the pig tail up into that access hole and it's out of sight. Really a neat trick. My C6 didn't have that or maybe I just couldn't find it. I just bring it up over the top of the rear fascia and wrap a soft, thin cotton rag around it so it protects the paint on the edge of the trunk opening.
Piece of cake.
Norm
It looks like you have a C5 and mine is a C6, but both pretty similar. Get a flat four coupler with wires from a parts store that matches your flat four on the trailer. (U-haul and Westbar fit slightly differently, but they are compatible.)
White Wire: Ground. Probably the most important wire of the 4 because if you don't have a good ground your signals may be weak or non-existant. Bolt the end to a good, solid ground. I found one around the internal latch for the hatch. It also helps to have the trailer on the hitch ball as that helps give some grounding effect also.
Brown wire: Running lights. Each tail light on the trailer has a brown wire going to it to operate the running lights whenever your parking lights or headlights are on. This also operates the side marker running lights on the trailer. Find a brown wire inside the rear panel of the Vette that goes to your car's rear lighting. Remove the rear panel to access the tail lights on the car and my C6 had the bundle of wires coming into the passenger side rear light and then from there the left side got the wires from the right side. So I tapped into the brown wire over there and with a good ground your running lights should work with your parking lights on.
Yellow wire: Left turn signal and left brake light. There should be only one yellow wire ... a razor blade can strip off 1/2" of plastic coating and you can hook your pig tail yellow wire up to that with enough electrical tape to ensure no loose stray wires will touch another stray, bare wire.
Green wire: Right turn signal and right brake light. Same procedure here. Except on my C6 there were a couple of "greenish" wires. I guessed wrong the 1st time and went to a "blue-green" wire and that was the right one. One trick is you can often avoid stripping the plastic coating off the (wrong) wire by first using a safety pin or one of those pins that comes in a new dress shirt ... stick it through the coating and hook a lead on to it and test it first before stripping.
With the ignition ON have someone operate the headlights, turn signals & brakes (or you can depress the brake with a broom wedged against the seatback if no one is around).
My son has a C5 and he found a trick little access hole from inside to feed the pig tail through the panel just above the license plate. So when he's not using the trailer he stuffs the pig tail up into that access hole and it's out of sight. Really a neat trick. My C6 didn't have that or maybe I just couldn't find it. I just bring it up over the top of the rear fascia and wrap a soft, thin cotton rag around it so it protects the paint on the edge of the trunk opening.
Piece of cake.
Norm
05-30-2006, 05:25 AM
#5
Wiring a trailer for the C5 is VERY easy. If you take off the pass rear tire you will find a wiring harness at the rear inside of the wheel well that will appear to go into the trunk of car. This is the tail light wiring and a very simple place to tap into. If your disconect the conector and a few clips you can even bring it coser to the outside of the car to make it easier to work on. I did a search on this forum and found a list of which wire controls what. As far as the wiring harness goes, after an exhaustive search of many auto parts stores, I finally found one at U-Haul. I used the crimp on conectors that came with the wiring harness and some zip ties to keep the wiring away from the exhaust. You should be able to complete the job in less time than it takes to read this post.