When I got my new folding trailer from Harbor Freight I noticed that I had some lighting issues. I swear I’ve been round and round trying to track it down as a ground fault since that’s typically the most likely culprit. I had times where the right side would either not work at all or would be very weak. I also noticed that the trailer lights would work with the engine running but only the left side worked with the engine off.

I tried running a dedicated ground and that failed to resolve the issue. I also tried my magnetic lights which provide their own ground and those behaved the same. I finally took a multimeter to the truck side of the harness and discovered that the right side barely showed any voltage. I figured this meant that my Reese converter was at fault.

Yesterday I received a new Hopkins converter kit in the mail. You gotta love Amazon. Locally it goes for $40 + tax. I paid $25 shipped. I was thrilled that my lights started working as expected when I was done. The install was very simple and only took about 15 minutes. It took considerably longer to wrap the wiring in split loom. 🙂

I was so happy, in fact, that I decided to go ahead and install the LED lighting kit I’d picked up. The stock lights that came with the trailer were adequate but dimmer than I wanted. All I had to do was swap the old lights out for the new and run the wiring for the side markers since I’d never done that. I’m quite pleased with the results and feel like I’ll be a little more visible and therefore safer on the road now.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5ZWf7OgULU