I went fishing on Thursday and left before sunrise. All the trailer lights were working perfectly. When I turned them on for the trip home the marker lights didn't come on. The stop/turn still worked and thankfully it was a short drive so I made it home without a ticket or an accident. I tested the truck the next day and the trailer circuit was dead, but fortunately it had popped a fuse rather than fry something expensive. It took a bit of searching to find the fuse but that fixed it. I was smart enough to text the trailer and find the short before just plugging it in again.

 

The trailer is a Bear brand made in 2006. It turns out that they did the wiring by just torching a hole in the steel tubing wherever a wire enters or exits the frame. The edges of all those holes are exactly as ragged as you would expect torch cuts to be. Between 19 years of weather deteriorating the insulation and the mechanical rubbing where the wires entered the frame there were two places with exposed wires causing dead shorts. Honestly as bad as the wear was I'm amazed they hadn't failed long before. So I spent my afternoon yesterday completely rewiring my boat trailer. I elected to run the wires along the outside rather than through the frame so I hopefully wouldn't have the same issue again. I know it doesn't look as clean but I don't really care about looks on a boat trailer LOL.

 

Everybody checks if their trailer lights function before going on a long trip, but how often do you really look at the wiring? It might save you a big headache to check any entry or exit points for insulation failure, and maybe even give the wires a wrap of electrical tape at those points.

Good advice!

 

This is why I changed the wiring to regular old household extension cords. Not only is the wire a larger gauge, but it also has thicker insulation on each wire, and has that external insulation covering over the internal wires, so more than double the insulation.

 

Using this type of 3 conductor wire I can eliminate the ground connection at front of trailer where they usually just use a screw to attach the ground wire, and at rear of trailer each light is also grounded to trailer by a screw to each light. Those screw connections can corrode and fail over time.

 

So using a standard 3 wire extension cord- a 50' cord- cut in half is 25 feet down each side of the trailer. Now I can connect up the ground wire from tow vehicle directly to the lights bypassing using the trailer for the ground connection to each light. Direct wiring. Works like a charm and I believe is more durable over the long run and does not turn the trailer into a ground potential for any positive wires to short out to.

 

Nothing like finding out your lights don't work when those blue lights flip on behind you! Been there. Done that.

 

How much does a 50' household extension cord cost? $15 to $20? Sure beats the price of a ticket!

 

Good help is hard to find these days. I bet the bossman at trailer company told the blow torch guy to clean up that hole and maybe he just ignored it and set you up for this one! They don't make them like they used to! Help that is. Glad you got it fixed! Back to fishin'!

I recently did some re-wiring to replace the 4-prong/5 wire connector to my truck.

 

My Ranger trailer has an open frame so that all the wiring can be accessed much more easily.  The quality components and design of my trailer was a selling point when I bought the boat back in 2015.  I think a lot of boat buyers don't think about this sort of thing when they are buying.  They focus solely on the boat.  The trailer is very important.  You can't use the boat without the trailer after all.

1 hour ago, gim said:

The quality components and design of my trailer was a selling point when I bought the boat back in 2015.  I think a lot of boat buyers don't think about this sort of thing when they are buying.  They focus solely on the boat.  The trailer is very important.  You can't use the boat without the trailer after all.

I thought the same when I bought my RT178.  The trailer leaf spring broke 2 months ago.  Trailer repair shop was very surprised Ranger didn't use triple leaf springs.

1 hour ago, RobA said:

I thought the same when I bought my RT178.  The trailer leaf spring broke 2 months ago.  Trailer repair shop was very surprised Ranger didn't use triple leaf springs.

 

This is what Florida does to them:

 

 

 

I dropped these on concrete thinking I was going to knock off some rust. Little did I know on one side of trailer 2 out of 4 leaf springs completely rusted to dust. I dropped these from about waste high. They shattered like glass.

 

So I had 3 out of 8 leaf springs completely gone.

I am a big proponent of drilling out those torch blown holes and putting a grommet of some kind in it.

 

I just got done rewiring my buddy’s Tracker trailer and I don’t think a single hole was done with a drill bit from the factory. The blowout for the left side marker was so bad that the light housing didn’t completely cover it.

For those of us with brakes on our trailers, don’t forget to check those lines as well.  

I check my lights every time I go fishing.  It's part of the pre-trip procedure.

 

While we're talking trailers, here are four other "gotchas" that will leave you on the roadside (or worse) if you don't check them...

 

 

 

 

 

Plus a quick tip to extend the life of your bunks:

 

 

On 9/1/2025 at 2:23 PM, Glenn said:

I check my lights every time I go fishing.  It's part of the pre-trip procedure.

 

While we're talking trailers, here are four other "gotchas" that will leave you on the roadside (or worse) if you don't check them...

 

 

 

 

 

Plus a quick tip to extend the life of your bunks:

 

 

The idea of the ball coming loose from the hitch insert is completely foreign to be because I’ve only ever had the opposite issue. After a couple of years mine are permanently stuck. In fact, I ended up buying two inserts and balls because I couldn’t unscrew the ball to flip the insert for my mower trailer.

Do people unscrew the ball hitch when they need a different size ball?  I don't know anyone doing that.  Tighten that sucker down as hard as you can and simply swap out hitches with balls already attached.  Much easier and safer.

On 9/16/2025 at 9:56 AM, gim said:

Do people unscrew the ball hitch when they need a different size ball?  I don't know anyone doing that.  Tighten that sucker down as hard as you can and simply swap out hitches with balls already attached.  Much easier and safer.

I have had a couple come loose on me, and I never swap them.
 

The alloys used by many manufacturers now will continue to stretch long after they are initially torqued, so unless you’re using a non-threaded setup like a B&W or a welded mount, it’s a good idea to always check them. 

I actually blew my running light fuse for the trailer plug  last weekend in my truck. I plead the 5th of how I handled it at 4:30am.

Excellent PSA to check your wires. My trailer is very old. It lives inside so I never thought about the wiring. I checked it and the wires were very brittle and the insulation just crunched and fell off. I replaced all the wires last weekend. So if it has been a while, for safety, check your wires.